Reading journey 閱讀之旅

After graduation from NTNU, I have been reading English books of a wide variety of genres. Several years back I enjoyed reading Jeffrey Archer, particularly the Clifton Chronicles. Before Jeffrey Archer, I was reading Haruki Murakami novels and John Simmons’s books on creative writing.

Reading is a journey of one’s intellectual growth and it protects our brain from deteriorating. Perhaps I have surpassed the stage of reading the works of Murakami and Simmons. They still produce great writings – but I am not as ‘into it’ as I was before.

Contrarily, I miss the works of Anthony Seldon – the guru of Blairism. His works about Tony Blair were spectacular – especially Blair Unbound. I am also very interested to read his insights about Gordon Brown and David Cameron, succeeding prime ministers after Tony Blair.

For the past few months I have been reading U.S.-published psychiatric books – particularly, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Those books are very interesting and I am planning to delve into Bipolar Disorder (BD); Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD); and co-dependency.

Before learning more about other mental illnesses, I would like to return to the works of Seldon and Archer.

Too little time for so many interesting books – is perhaps the longtime conundrum of a keen reader.

自從師大畢業之後，我讀英文書涉獵的領域很廣。數年前我開始迷上英國小說家傑弗里阿徹，尤其是克里夫頓家族編年史。閱讀阿徹小說之前，比較常在讀村上春樹小說、莊西蒙斯的創意寫作書籍。

閱讀關乎個人成長與學養，亦協助我們延遲腦袋退化。我的閱讀經驗已經超越了村上與西蒙斯，縱使兩位大師依然佳作不斷，我亦不大熱衷了。

我反而更想念安東尼謝爾頓的作品，英國學界尊稱他為「布萊爾主義」的大師。他筆下有關布萊爾的作品非常精彩，尤其是《Blair Unbound》。布萊爾之後的英國首相是白高敦和卡梅倫，謝爾頓亦著有專書，我非常感興趣。

過去數個月我一直在閱讀美國出版的精神科書籍，尤其是邊緣型人格障礙。這些書常常讓我讀得著迷，我之後想探究躁鬱症、自戀型人格疾患、關係依賴成癮。

還未再深入探究其他精神科疾病之前，我想先回歸謝爾頓、阿徹的大作。

時間太少，想讀的書太多，這恐怕是讀書人永恆的困境。