Books (early years)
Ok, a bit later than planned.
It was a great trip to Louisiana, though the competition result was not that good, spending times with old partners and teammates was never boring, and the extra adventure to Baton Rouge was nice. I’ll talk about Huey Long next time.
I promised to talk about books.
A huge portion of books I read is detective novels. When I was very young, one of the first books I read was Sherlock Holmes in Chinese. I never managed to finish all of the stories but reading it was really cool and satisfying, as, to be honest, seeming to be intelligent was real sexy.
But I did not read a lot for a long time, I could name less than ten books that moved me and were read completely by me before Gaosan. Kuerliulangji, the first book my dad bought for me; Sanguoyanyi, reading it as a by-product of obsessed with Sanguosha; Shuihuzhuan, another try to classics as Sanguo turned out well; Pingfandeshijie, kinda felt related because I was in a relationship; Langtuteng, kinda obsessed with mysteries; Sishitongtang, during the rebellious Chusan; Harry Potter, the first time I read in English seriously.
During that time, most of other readings were tedious and boring to me. The first attempt for English book by myself was The Death On the Nile I bought at an airport. Sadly there was a reading report I had to hand in as the winter vacation homework so I read the plot summary on Wikipedia and ended up only reading 50% of the book.
Nonetheless, it was a great book. By that time I was still having trouble remembering the characters’ names of any foreign book. Also, I have an obsession of reading the ‘big names’. I guess it was the part of the education I received. ‘Always read the classics’. I kept looking for the most famous detective novelists, some ‘top 100’ books lists, and bought all of them to satisfy both my greed for intriguing plots and my pride.
Agatha Christie is the biggest part of the list, then John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen (still waiting to read the tragedies trilogy). Other writer I would only read few so-called ‘best’ ones, like Raymond Chandler, Lawrence Block, Josephine Tey, etc. I guess I only care for the classics part of the detective novels, mostly from US and UK. I know nowadays Japanese novels are dispensable in detective novels market, but I never bothered to check any of them, as I only tried a book from their pioneer Edogawa Rampo.
The best detective novels I read in Chinese is 1367 by the Hong Kong man Chen Haoji. The time I enjoyed reading it coincided with the political movements happening in HK in 2019. Combining those politics, colonization, duty, police, self-identification, revolution (1967) topics really intrigued me.
Well, I am a bit sick back from traveling, that’s all for today.