This is for booklovers only.
It was a nice summer. Though I worked on curriculum and teacher training, I had time to get to the park and read on a regular basis.
Every weekend Renmin University holds a large outdoor book sale. Last May, when I was running out of reading material, I went to this book sale (which was discovered by KK) and I picked up a few books to add to my meager library.
One was a silly little mystery that I just finished.
Feeling guilty for reading such simple stuff, I’ve just started something a little more substantive.
But after only a few pages, I get a little sleepy, so now I balance Russell’s book with either science fiction short stories…
…or Sherlock Holmes (which I’ve read completely – every short story and every novel – at least 3 times since my youth).
It is very common for classics to be printed in China with the English and Chinese versions side by side, as in this case.
I suspect the original was scanned with the aid of an optical character reader (OCR) because the English side has weird, OCR-type errors. I’m trying to finish this quickly so I can give it to one of the workers in the cafeteria who, I’ve learned, is an avid reader.
I’m also currently reading Meacham’s well-written biography of Thomas Jefferson. I highly recommend it.
In my current circumstances, I like to have several books going at the same time so I can choose depending on my mood, location, and time of day.
When I was in junior high, my older brother handed down to me a book called A Leaf in a Storm by Lin Yutang, a very famous author in both the Chinese and English languages. I never got around to reading it (though I still have it), I use the philosophy embodied in its title often in conversations or speeches.
A few days ago I was helping a teacher move her stuff from one dorm room to another. Unfortunately, the other dorm room was my extra bedroom, hopefully only a temporary stopover.
I noticed a colorful book and asked about it, thereby discovering that it, too, was by Lin Yutang. So, now I’m reading that book, also: Moment in Peking.
It’s a novel that takes place in China during the Boxer Rebellion (around 1900), and it turns out that A Leaf in a Storm is its sequel. It’s written in what I view as a typical flowery Chinese style, and it depicts what life in China was like in those days in great detail.
I have two basic venues for reading: the park, on most afternoons, and in bed just before going to sleep. I can read any of my four current books in the park. The problem is the other venue, where I’m laying flat on my back: Sherlock is large and floppy and requires two hands to hold; Jefferson is heavy and requires two hands; Western Philosophy is heavy in a different sense and more effective than 3 Ambien; and Moment is, at least at the moment, fairly sad and not something I want to go to sleep with.
All of which adds up to the fact that I need to go back to the book sale and buy a cheesy novel to read at night.
保罗
P.S. Yeah, I know it’s “redding.”
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