Personal Library -- Pride and Prejudice

Author: (British) Austin Tang Liang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The ancients said, "Travel ten thousand miles and read ten thousand books." For modern people, traveling ten thousand miles is easy, but reading ten thousand books is difficult. The wheels of technology are sweeping across the world at an astonishing speed. The modern people, busy in front of computers and all kinds of machines all day, have turned the Earth into a village with wires, optical cables, tracks, or air routes. With a click of the mouse, we can paste ourselves anywhere in the world. However, in the face of vast civilizations, lacking the foundation of reading ten thousand books, we not only frequently encounter the awkwardness of "meeting face to face but not recognizing each other," but we also constantly accumulate the strangeness that comes from the depths of our hearts. For this, we long for a deeper understanding, a connection of the soul; we long for a return to a way of traveling—before traveling ten thousand miles, put a few books in our spiritual backpack so that our steps and souls can go further. A spiritual journey does not require "writing poems in youth and studying until the hair turns white," nor does it require hanging the head on the beam, breaking through the wall to steal light, or having a red sleeve add fragrance while never putting the book down. A spiritual journey only requires reading a few classics in the leisure of life. Novels, essays, and poems can all be made into soup for the soul; buses, subways, and even the palms of our hands can be our desks. Therefore, we have tailor-made a "pocket library" for busy urban dwellers. Classics are the soul of the library; easy to absorb is the essence of the library; reading anytime, anywhere, and with any heart is the purpose of the library. The selected works in the library are all the timeless classics that have been refined after exposing themselves to the harsh realities of different civilizations; the illustrations, carefully selected and painstakingly collected from hundreds of rare books and private collections, are a true restoration of the essence of the classics. The small format design makes it as clever as a wallet; the special printing process makes every book "filled with the fragrance of osmanthus." Classics are not afraid of time, but life cannot withstand the erosion of "the passage of time is like this." The charm of classics is better seen than heard. It is better to use them to mend the gaps in our time, to add value to the fragments of our days; it is better to use on-the-go reading to gather wisdom piece by piece, and to understand life in the spiritual journey. Reading classics, with the least travel expenses, to the furthest reaches of life.
The novel is primarily about the love entanglement between Elizabeth and Darcy, interspersed with descriptions of four marriages. Among them, Charlotte and Collins' marriage is entirely based on beauty and lust, and these marriages are unhappy. In contrast, Elizabeth and Jane's marriage is based on love, which is a truly happy match. Although the union of Elizabeth and Darcy, as well as Jane and Bingley, does not exclude considerations of economy and appearance, they place more emphasis on each other's qualities and virtues, ultimately resolving their misunderstandings and prejudices and uniting happily. Through this novel, the author wants to tell people: marriage is beautiful, but a marriage without love is terrible. One must take love and marriage seriously and cautiously, and must not be deceived by superficial appearances. Love and marriage are not just personal matters; they also involve responsibilities to relatives and friends, and to society. Only a marriage based on love is truly happy.