Chapter 35 (1/2)
Shi Yan realised that he had unintentionally cracked a joke, but he didn’t find it embarra.s.sing and his att.i.tude was as c.o.c.ky as usual, “What are you laughing at? Are you showing off the depth of your knowledge? Your Daye1 I just hate reading this kind of chick lits.”
“If you say cla.s.sics are chick lits, then wouldn’t Water Margin2 be a lad lit?”
Shi Yan suddenly thought that he hadn’t really seen much of a variety of books around, “What kind of novels do you like?”
“Un,” He Nuo thought for abit, “I like to read those that are good. I’ve read quite a lot, no specific genre.”
“Let me see your novels.”
“My novels? All the ones I read belong to my brothers. They borrow books from the unit’s library. But they don’t really borrow any nowadays, when I was younger they often borrowed books.”
When He Nuo’s nephew woke up, Shi Yan dragged them out to play. But actually, he just brought them to Xinhua bookstore. This one teenager and one kid were very excited; He Nuo carefully walked by every counter3 and looked at every book on display through the gla.s.s casing, and he lingered at the autobiography section for quite some time; while his nephew stayed at the Children Books and Children Literacy Pictures section and refused to leave.
That night, Shi Yan told his parents that it was boring to stay at home during the holidays, so he wanted to read some novels and gave his parents a list of t.i.tles. It was a good chance for their son to gain knowledge through reading so they didn’t object to it, though they were puzzled as to why there were two children books included in his list. So within two days, Shi Yan had gotten the books that he wanted — you could consider it as books bought under public expense.
Shi Yan excitedly ran over to He Nuo’s place the next day, and the moment he entered He Nuo’s room he dropped a plastic bag on his bed. He Nuo’s eyes immediately fixated upon the books on his bed and picked each and every book up to look at its t.i.tles. The Three Gians of World War II: Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin; The Three Main Culprits of World War II: Hitler, Mussolini, Hideki Tojo, and there were two other solitary books on the World War II famous generals Desert Fox Rommel and Five-Star General MacArthur4.
“You bought these?” He Nuo’s voice was trembling.
“You think I’m crazy enough to buy them?”
“These are new.” He Nuo stated the truth. It would be weird if it wasn’t new; He Nuo had glanced over it a few times, these were all new books that had never been touched before and it’s impossible that these books belonged to the library. Most importantly, the library doesn’t stock books that are published this recently.
“My Dad bought them for me.” Shi Yan sat next to him, “I can lend them to you, but you need to promise me something.”
“What is it?”
“My Dad stipulated that I had to finish reading these books before our holiday ends. But half of summer vacation is over and I haven’t even started on them. So when you finish reading these books, you need to tell me what they’re about.”
He Nuo couldn’t help but laugh, then sighed, “What have you been doing during the holidays? You don’t even have the time to read books? Have you been watching TV and playing all day? We’ll be third years when school reopens.”