Personal Library -- High Old Man

Author: (French) Balzac
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 originates from the bottom of our hearts. For this, we yearn for a deeper understanding, for a connection of the soul; we yearn for a return to a way of traveling—in which, before traveling ten thousand miles, we first put a few books in our spiritual backpacks to allow our steps and souls to 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 down the book. 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; carrying it with you, reading anytime, anywhere, and in any state of mind is the purpose of the library. The selected titles 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 "time flies." 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 anytime, anywhere, to gather wisdom piece by piece, and to understand life in the spiritual journey. Reading classics, with the least travel expenses, to reach the farthest distance in life. The Old Man is one of the most famous works in Balzac's series The Human Comedy, selected by Somerset Maugham as one of the world's ten greatest novels. The story is centered around a young man named Rastignac, who arrives in Paris from the countryside with pure enthusiasm, only to find himself in a corrupt city full of temptation and desire. We have all been that innocent young Rastignac, and we might become those small, timid, and oblivious figures, either falling into decadence or striving to prove themselves. After all, these people, though with unfamiliar French names, all have faces that are either familiar or will become familiar to you. Balzac's The Old Man is a great realistic novel, perhaps even an already fulfilled prophecy.