I Read

This book grew out of the daily Phoenix Television book program Eight Minutes of Open Books, hosted by Leung Man-tao and compiled by the Phoenix Television Publishing Center. Each day the program spent eight minutes on one book, and this volume moves part of what was discussed on air onto the page: the host first reads and digests a book thoroughly, then retells it in a single talk, so it reads less like a standard book review than like a casual conversation mixed with social observation and reflections on life. The book opens with a topic like "why we need to read different kinds of books," first discussing reading itself, then unfolding book by book. It discusses How to Read a Book, on how to move from simple reading to becoming an amateur scholar; How Picture Books Work, on how to "read" a picture book; A Private Reading History, 1978–2008, Gray Books and Yellow Books, and Duku, looking sideways at how reading habits changed over thirty years through the relationship between books and people; and Casanova Was a Book Lover and 84, Charing Cross Road, telling of book lovers' obsessions and epistolary romance. The latter half turns to literary and artistic works: The Art of Craftsmanship · Lifelike and True reveals the serious side of a Hong Kong novelist, The Death of Che Guevara draws the lament "what a pity, he failed," and Wang Xiaobo's The Silent Majority, The Golden Age, and The Republic and the Philosopher King are used to ask where the essence of liberalism lies. The books involved span fiction, philosophy, essays, memoirs, psychology, and works of social thought; the author's attitude neither panders nor stirs emotions, nor rushes to judge good or bad, but places each book back in its own era and questions. For readers, the value of this book probably lies in this: it demonstrates a way of reading—books can be read like this, and in the end, reading is for understanding more tolerantly how complex the world is.