Hold to your gun, man.
The better I got to know Nagasawa, the stranger he seemed. I had met a lot of strange people in my day, but none as strange as Nagasawa. He was a far more voracious reader than I, but he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least thirty years. "That's the only kind of book I can trust," he said.
"It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short."
"What kind of authors do you like?" I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior.
"Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens," he answered without hesitation.
"Not exactly fashionable."
"That's why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that...."
-- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
Haha, and I thought I was a book snob. I wish I knew more people who could make such cuttingly incisive observations about life. Or at least about the reading habits of the general population.
"It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short."
"What kind of authors do you like?" I asked, speaking in respectful tones to this man two years my senior.
"Balzac, Dante, Joseph Conrad, Dickens," he answered without hesitation.
"Not exactly fashionable."
"That's why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that...."
-- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
Haha, and I thought I was a book snob. I wish I knew more people who could make such cuttingly incisive observations about life. Or at least about the reading habits of the general population.