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Reading

November 7, 2019

He had liked to read books since he was young.   When he was an elementary school student, one of his friends had a book selection of world literature. He borrowed them one by one; they were 'Les Miserables', 'The Count of Monte Christo', 'Sans Famille', etc.  The stories were thrilling, impressive, and moving; they affected his way of thinking, he believed. When he was at junior high school, he became a fan of foreign detective stories. He would go to his school library, which had a large number of detective stories for students. He especially liked the 'Sherlock Homes' and 'Arsene Lupin' series. Even now he remembered the authors' names 'Conan Doyle' and 'Maurice Leblanc'. When he was at high school, he came to like this country's authors for the first time. One was a novelist who used to be a doctor. He especially liked this author's 'Dr. Headfish' series. A headfish, or sunfish, is a fish that has a big head and its shape is humorous. The author nicknamed himself this because his appearance was similar to it, at least the author thought so. The author's sense of humor matched his own. Reading his books, he laughed and laughed. Another of his favorite writers was a historical story writer. The writer's stories were all set in the Edo period, the samurai era. The most famous story was 'Red Beard'. A doctor whose nickname was 'Red Beard' had a clinic in the middle of the downtown area, and this was a story about his staff and his patients who sometimes were too poor to pay the fees and who lived under an unreasonable situation in society. But his favorite was another story, its name was 'Killer!' The protagonist, a samurai, wanted to get revenge on a samurai who had killed a person close to him. But he was bad at sword fighting and his enemy was a master of sword fighting. The protagonist got an idea. He followed the enemy at a certain distance and repeatedly shouted toward the enemy, "Killer! Killer!" When the enemy started to run after him, he retreated, shouting, "Killer! Killer!" As the protagonist could run faster than his enemy, the enemy couldn't catch him. This thing happened every day, day and night, and eventually the enemy got tired, and went to the police station asking them to arrest him and put him in jail, so he could have some rest. He was amazed at the idea of the author, not insisting on the common notion that escaping was a shame but rather using a strategy to fit one's ability in order to meet the end goals. He liked creative stories of writers.   After he started to work, he came to like two types of genre to read: international business stories and spy stories. He liked a particular author who wrote mainly about businessmen who worked overseas. His country depended on exporting products, but people didn't know how those businessmen worked. Now there were many domestic and international business stories, but the author was a pioneer. One book was about a business man who was struggling to sell products in Africa. Another book that he had read from this author was called 'Price Breaking'. This story was said to be written about the first appliance shop in this country and it was a story of a price war between a small appliance shop and the big appliance makers. Electric appliance makers wanted to keep their product prices stable, and if a shop sold their products cheaper than at their regular price, they would stop selling to the store. The protagonist was an appliance shop owner. He was selling reduced priced goods using various methods, so not to make the makers realize which store was selling the reduced priced items, it was thrilling. The protagonist wanted to sell goods as cheap as possible because he had lived in a poor family and there were many people who wanted to buy products, like a TV, but couldn't afford it. Spy stories were another of his favorite genres. Before, during the time of Soviet Union, there were many intelligence activities, and an author who used to work in the oil business wrote about battles secretly between countries. Living in a country that was safe and calm, he wanted to realize that this world wasn't so safe and simple. Now he was retired. He had a lot of time. He wanted to expand his reading genre because his genre became very narrow. So now, he would often go to a particular bookstore that had a huge selection of books. They had chairs here and there, and they sold secondhand books as well as new. The bookstore even had the in-shop cafe. When he was browsing, he would wonder how so many writers could exist in this country. They must be earning their livings solely from their books. How could someone choose a book in this ocean of books? He would take books randomly and read a little one by one, but this method seemed inefficient. He thought about choosing books from a list of book award winners. There were many annual book awards in this country, so there must be a lot of books receiving awards. But, he had read some award winning books, and he had to say that not all of the books were good. Maybe creating a way to choose a book to read could be another pastime for a bookworm like him.

*solely :もっぱら
*pastime :楽しみ
*headfish :マンボウ
*bookworm :本の虫