借书对于驱动我阅读特别有效。主要原因有两个：第一，Deadline就是生产力，好几次都是赶在借阅时间到期前飞速读完；第二，在还书之前（尤其是在遇到特别喜欢的内容时），总想着留些笔记，主要为了实现借阅利益的最大化，这也促使自己对阅读的内容进行梳理。现在下一期的借阅包裹已经在手边了，我蠢蠢欲动想打开看瞧瞧，但是上一期的读书笔记还没写完，“没有完成上一期笔记就不可以开下一期！”唉，强迫症的自己真是让人抓狂。

迪奥的时尚笔记

这本轻薄的小书是迪奥创始人Christina Dior的时尚笔记，他针对每一个时尚元素，给出了专业见解和实用建议。书初出版在二十世纪五十年代，其中关于服装材质，元素设计，配饰搭配的建议，六十多年后的今天读起来也一点都不过时。迪奥先生认为优雅是个性，自然，精心和简洁的正确组合。除此之外，绝无优雅可言。其中最重要的是精心。他提倡：精心穿戴，精心打理。最让人惊讶的是迪奥作为代表性的奢侈品牌之一，竟然秉持奢侈是优雅的反面。优雅可以大胆出位，但永远不可以奢侈，铺张奢侈是品味差的表现。宁愿在朴素中犯错，也强过在穿着打扮上奢侈浪费。

1957年迪奥先生去世后，Yves Saint Laurent接任迪奥的首席设计师，当时年仅21岁。他出生在法属阿尔及利亚（加缪的《鼠疫》故事发生地），1960年阿尔及利亚战争爆发时被应征入伍。不知是因为性格内向还是同性恋的缘故，当年他宣称精神崩溃入院接受治疗，从此和迪奥分手，另起炉灶创办了YSL，于是后来就有了常年断货的千颂伊52号。

如父如子

读《如父如子》哭得一塌糊涂。明明是一个虚构的故事，情节人物有很重的设计感，可还是被深深的感动。两个男孩临上小学前收到医院通知被抱错了，为了给孩子回归亲生父母身边做准备，两个家庭开始接触。一家是每天忙于工作无暇陪伴孩子的建筑师爸爸，一家是天天和娃插科打诨玩成一片还会修理电动玩具的小店主爸爸。不同的社会阶层不同的家庭氛围不同的相处模式引发出一连串的故事，两个家庭也在这一过程中各自反思。养育过程中培养的情感，尤其是孩子对父亲的爱却是同样的纯粹。这类亲情卦一向很容易戳中我的泪点，但是不得不承认，是枝裕和特别擅长讲亲情故事。去年看他的《小偷家族》和《海街日记》，电影里很少有剧烈的戏剧冲突，家庭成员自己的内心情绪，成员之间的感情牵绊，都通过对人物表情动作和对话的淡淡描述流露出来，很东亚很李安。

读书的时候不知道这是一部电影，看完书跑去看了下电影介绍片又哭了一遍。

阅读是一座随身携带的避难所

毛姆的读书随笔，有趣且干货满满。毛姆认为愉悦是阅读的第一要义，作家（尤其是小说家）不应该担任传播知识的职责。

在“怎样的人写出怎样的书”里毛姆分享了很多文学巨匠的个人生活经历，当作八卦读起来津津有味。简奥斯丁、司汤达、狄更斯、福楼拜、巴尔扎克、陀思妥耶夫斯基在毛姆笔下不再是文学史上一个个冷冰冰的名字，而是在生活的颠沛流离中挣扎沉浮的活生生的普通人。许多伟大的作品也并非灵光一现的创作，更多是为生活所迫倒逼出来的日积月累的工作。文豪们常常在作品中的对人性的弊端进行探讨，然而现实生活里他们常常自己恰恰是人性的俘虏。

把这些文学巨匠生活的秘辛和毛姆的《人性的枷锁》放到一起看特别有意思，可以发现很多小说情节的出处和影子。《人性的枷锁》毛姆的自传体小说，很厚的一本，但是读起来毫不费力，不多久就读完一部大部头让人很有成就感。《人性的枷锁》里男主人公菲利普在巴黎学画，对是否要继续坚持去请教大师的情节，就来自年轻的巴尔扎克把自己的剧本寄给一位教授，连教授的回复都是一样的。菲利普出资给心爱的米尔德里德和花心室友去巴黎旅行，陀思妥耶夫斯基出资帮助心爱的玛丽亚伊沙耶娃和瓦格诺夫完成婚礼。菲利普和陀思妥耶夫斯基也有着类似的受虐心理，在被迷恋的女子三番两次轻视与折磨下，反而更加加深了对她的爱恋。毛姆还借菲利普初恋的口提到莫泊桑的轻浮。

毛姆在随笔中对美和善的阐述在《人性的枷锁》中也得到一致的体现。

菲利普在最穷困潦倒居无定所的日子里去博物馆看艺术作品聊以慰藉，在随笔中毛姆这样描述自己的感受：

“在伟大的艺术作品面前，一个人的反应到底是什么呢？我知道我的感受如何，那是一种兴奋夹杂着喜悦的感觉，同时充满理性和感性，是一种让我获得某种力量进而从人性的束缚中获得解放的幸福感。同时，我感受到自己处于一种充满人类同情心的温柔心境之中。我因此而觉得踏实、内心平静，精神上也感到超然。如果艺术是一种慰藉，那么足以。这个世界充满了不可比拟的邪恶，如果人类偶尔能从古往今来遗留下来的艺术作品中寻求庇护，这样是极好的。但这并非逃避，而是汲取新的力量来面对这些邪恶。”

毛姆认为善良是最值得崇敬的情感，在《人性的枷锁》里他给了菲利普一个圆满的大结局：和善良的莎莉在一起。当初读到这里只觉得太突兀而且明显菲利普是不爱莎莉的，在随笔中似乎找到了一些解释。毛姆认为善良是幽默对命运荒唐和悲哀的一种反驳，不同于美，善良可以达到尽善却不让人觉得厌倦，同时比爱更伟大，因为善良的光不会随着时间而褪淡。这样看来似乎没有比和一个善良又爱自己的人在一起更好的结局了。

AI-generated translation.

Borrowing books works wonderfully on me as a reading motivator. Two main reasons: first, deadlines are productivity — more than once I’ve raced through a book right before the loan was due; second, before I return a book (especially when I’ve hit something I love), I always want to take some notes, mostly to maximize the return on the loan, which also forces me to organize what I’ve read. The next batch of borrowed books is sitting at my elbow right now; I’m itching to open them, but I haven’t finished my notes on the previous batch — “You can’t start the next batch before you finish the last batch’s notes!” — ugh, my own obsessive streak is maddening.

Dior’s Little Dictionary of Fashion

This slim little book is the fashion notebook of Dior’s founder, Christian Dior. For each fashion element he offers his professional take and practical advice. The book was first published in the 1950s, and yet his advice on fabrics, design elements and accessory pairings reads, sixty-plus years later, not the least bit out of date. Monsieur Dior believes elegance is the right combination of personality, naturalness, attentiveness, and simplicity. Without those, there is no elegance. Most important of all is attentiveness — dress with care, groom with care. The most surprising thing is that Dior, of all people, as the face of one of the world’s most iconic luxury brands, insists that luxury is the opposite of elegance. Elegance can be bold and unconventional, but never extravagant; ostentatious extravagance is bad taste. Better to err on the side of plainness than to be wasteful in dress and ornament.

After Monsieur Dior’s death in 1957, Yves Saint Laurent took over as creative director — he was twenty-one. Born in French Algeria (the setting of Camus’s The Plague), he was conscripted in 1960 when the Algerian War broke out. Whether out of an introverted temperament or because of his being gay, he announced a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized; from there he parted ways with Dior and founded YSL. And so, eventually, the world got the perpetually-out-of-stock Touche Éclat No. 52.

Like Father, Like Son

Read Like Father, Like Son and bawled my eyes out. It’s clearly a fictional story, the characters and plot have a heavily designed feel — and yet I was moved deeply. Two boys, about to start elementary school, are informed by the hospital that they were swapped at birth. To prepare the children for going back to their biological parents, the two families start meeting. One family: an architect father, busy at work every day, with no time for his son. The other: a small shopkeeper father who horses around with the kid all day, plays with him constantly, and can even fix electric toys. Different social classes, different home atmospheres, different ways of relating, all unspool into one story after another, and both families begin reflecting on themselves. The bonds built through raising a child — especially a child’s love for his father — are equally pure in both households. This kind of family-bond story is a reliable button to push on my tear ducts, but I have to admit, Hirokazu Koreeda is unusually good at family stories. Last year I watched Shoplifters and Our Little Sister; both films have very few dramatic peaks; the inner emotions of each family member, and the ties between them, all leak out through the lightest descriptions of expression, gesture, and dialogue. Very East Asian, very Ang Lee.

I didn’t know while reading that Like Father, Like Son had been made into a film. After finishing the book I went and watched a film trailer and cried all over again.

Reading: A Refuge You Carry With You (Maugham)

Maugham’s reading essays — entertaining and dense with substance. Maugham believes pleasure is the first principle of reading, and that writers (especially novelists) shouldn’t shoulder the responsibility of disseminating knowledge.

In “What kind of person writes what kind of book,” Maugham shares the personal lives of many literary giants — read as gossip, it’s juicy. Austen, Stendhal, Dickens, Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoevsky stop being cold names in literary history under Maugham’s pen and become real, living ordinary people, struggling and bobbing in the chaos of life. Many of their great works weren’t bolts of inspiration either — they were forced out of them, hammered into shape day by day by the pressures of life. The literary masters often dissect human weakness in their work; in real life, they themselves are often prisoners of the very same human weakness.

Reading these literary giants’ private lives alongside Maugham’s Of Human Bondage is especially fun. You can see the originals and the shadows of many novel scenes. Of Human Bondage is Maugham’s autobiographical novel — a thick volume, but easy to read; finishing such a doorstopper in not too long is satisfying in itself. In the novel, the protagonist Philip is studying painting in Paris and agonizes over whether to keep seeking the verdict of a master — that scene is taken from the young Balzac sending his play to a professor; even the professor’s reply is the same. Philip funds a trip to Paris for the woman he loves, Mildred, with a philandering roommate; Dostoevsky funded the woman he loved, Maria Isaeva, and Vagonov as they completed their wedding. Philip and Dostoevsky also share a streak of masochism: as the woman they adore repeatedly slights and mistreats them, their devotion only deepens. Maugham even has Philip’s first love refer dismissively to Maupassant’s superficiality.

The praise of beauty and goodness Maugham develops in his essays is fully echoed in Of Human Bondage.

In Philip’s poorest, most rootless days, when he had nowhere stable to live, he went to the museum to look at art for comfort. In his essays Maugham describes his own feelings this way:

“What, exactly, is a person’s response in front of a great work of art? I know what I feel: an excitement laced with delight, at once rational and sensual; a happiness that gives me a kind of strength and frees me from the bondage of human nature. At the same time, I feel myself sliding into a gentle frame of mind filled with sympathy for humankind. That makes me feel grounded, inwardly at peace, and spiritually a little above the moment. If art is a consolation, that is enough. The world is full of incomparable evil; and if humans can occasionally take shelter in the works of art left behind by all those who came before, that is wonderful. It isn’t escape — it’s drawing fresh strength to face the evil.”

Maugham believes goodness is the most worthy emotion, and in Of Human Bondage he gives Philip a tidy, happy ending: he ends up with the kind-hearted Sally. When I first read it, the ending felt abrupt, and it was obvious Philip didn’t really love Sally. Maugham’s essays seem to offer some explanation. He believes goodness is humour’s rebuttal to the absurdity and sorrow of fate. Unlike beauty, goodness can be perfected without becoming wearying, and it is greater than love, because the light of goodness doesn’t fade with time. Looked at that way, there really may be no better ending than ending up with someone who is kind and who loves you.