Pastime Reading

I am crazily downloading the free books from internet, reading averagely 2 books a day. Most of them are detective stories, I favor Japanese writers' work. However, most of them are really old (the writers were born around 1930, pre-war Japan). These are all Chinese translations. I rarely read novels in English, the sticking factor is just somewhat lower than Chinese ones. I think Chinese is still the most comfortable reading materials for me, perhaps all the English writings draw me back to the studying for exams experience.

It is so amazing how badly written some novels are. The logics do not seem right and you can spot the inconsistency so easily. How they got the book published is really a mystery to me. Regardless, it is still my entertainment most of the nights after work (refuse to go drinking with my colleagues, partly because I hate the public transportation - I live in the country side and most of the partying places are in central amsterdam... And partly because I am really exhausted after the whole day of work. It is just better to spend an hour in the gym, sweating for an hour then take a hot shower, um, I think this is more relaxing).

I innocently downloaded a book by Suzuki Koji, the Chinese name of the book is "the fairy tales of 7 nights". It sounded interesting, I am expecting someone being killed and some smart detective came out to solve the mystery. The story began with 4 young folks died for no reason and the journalist vowed to get to the bottom of it. The story unfoled into a strange sort of answers, totally illogical and inconsistent (I still cannot understand why the powerful spirit hated the media so much but killed herself before she can avenge this grave insult to her and her parents). Nevertheless, Suzuki is very skillful writer, the horror was woven in slowly, tension raised, and I cannot sleep at night with all the lights shut.

Perhaps human beings are built to fear, fear the unknown, fear the uncertain and the unpredictable. Horror story writers deftly stir up the vivid imaginations, the horrifying images arose from your bottom of heart.