小说和电影《教父》都是以Michael的姐姐Connie的婚礼为教父这个家族的故事拉开序幕的。婚礼上，Michael带着他大学里认识的女朋友Kay出现在婚礼现场，两人有说有笑, 恩爱有加。后来Mike杀了人，为了躲避警察的调查和追捕，逃到了意大利西西里岛--他父亲的老家，生活了一段时间。

Michael住在他父亲的朋友家中，囚困在城堡里，整天无所事事。五个多月后的一天，他在乡间田野偶遇一位年轻貌美，浑身散发着青春气息的意大利姑娘。他像被雷击中了，一见钟情，魂不守舍，朝思暮想，夜不能寐。特此摘抄小说里描写Michael失魂落魄的情形和一些心理独白。

As for Michael Corleone, he found himself standing, his heart pounding in his chest; he felt a little dizzy. The blood was surging through his body, through all its extremities and pounding against the tips of his fingers, the tips of his toes. All the perfumes of the island came rushing in on the wind, orange, lemon blossoms, grapes, flowers. It seemed as if his body had sprung away from him out of himself.

…But this was the first time in his life such a thing had happened to him. It was nothing like his adolescent crushes, it was nothing like the love he’d had for Kay, a love based much on her sweetness, her intelligence, and the polarity of the fair and dark. This was an overwhelming desire for possession, this was an inerasable printing of the girl’s face on his brain and he knew she would haunt his memory every day of his life if he did not possess her. His life had become simplified, focused on one point, everything else was unworthy of even a moment’s attention. During his exile he had always thought of Kay, though he felt they could never again be lovers or even friends. He was, after all was said, a murderer, a mafiaso who had ‘made his bones’. But now Kay was wiped completely out of his consciousness.

Again Michael felt that shortness of breath, that flooding through his body of something that was not so much desire as an insane possessiveness. He understood for the first time the classical jealousy of the Italian male. He was at the moment ready to kill anyone who touched the girl, who tried to claim her, take her away from him. He wanted to own her as wildly as a miser wants to own gold coins, as hungrily as a sharecropper wants to own his own land. Nothing was going to stop him from owning this girl, possessing her, locking her in a house, and keeping her prisoner only for himself.

抄了这么三段话，只想用原文来证明，世间的爱可以是多种多样，可以日久生情，可以一见钟情，可以因为才华横溢被折服，也可以因为倾城倾国而放弃江山，可以是了解基础上的爱恋，也可以是原始肉欲冲动下霎那间的痴狂。小说中Michael的两段恋情，把这两种爱演绎得淋漓尽致，这两种不同的爱可以在同一个人身上发生。

如果说Michael在瞬间爱上那个田野里行走的姑娘是一个正常男人在荷尔蒙驱动下都会有的反应，那么接下来的举动并不是每一个男人都会做的，从中也不折不扣地反映了Michael这位未来教父骨子里的霸气，血气和勇气。

话说Michael看到姑娘离去的身影后，径直走进附近一家店想打听。当得知那个姑娘就是店主的女儿时，他在自我介绍自己是纽约逃犯后，说，你可以去报警，拿一笔赏金，但是你女儿会失去一个爸爸，而不是赢得一位丈夫。这短短的几句话就把人家给镇住了，Michael的话说得不温不火，但是很有几分匪气。

Michael回到居所处后，打听了情况，不顾任何反对意见，准备了三份厚礼登门拜访。这是他第一次拜访女方家，而他带来的礼物却是当地风俗一般只有求婚，结婚时才送的礼--他送姑娘一条沉甸甸的金项链 ，这么贵重的礼物让女孩的母亲瞠目结舌，也相信了他的诚意。

要知道，那时的Michael，是一个流浪被放逐的逃犯，半张塌陷的脸因为被纽约警察打伤后来不及治疗，留下的后遗症，伤及到脸部神经和鼻子，每隔几分钟就要流下鼻涕。而女方却来自当地一个很不错的殷实家庭。

在女方家，他单刀直入，眼神里的坚毅和目不转睛凝视女孩子的专注，和那种不达目的誓不罢休的气势，无形中征服／说服女方家庭父母。很快这对恋人结为伉俪，Michael也因此度过了他此生不能忘怀的蜜月。但是这段爱情却是一个悲剧。纽约的敌对黑帮派人来西西里杀Michael，在他的车里安装了炸弹。就在年轻的妻子坐上车开动引擎的一刹那，车毁人亡。Michael目睹着他的心上人湮没在火光和滚滚浓烟中。。。

心爱的姑娘死了，Michael也在老教父的百般努力下成功洗白，回到了纽约。他回来后没有去找最初的恋人Kay，以为Kay一定忘了他这个出自黑社会家庭的杀人犯。是 Kay对Michael的一往情深最终让这对曾经深爱过的恋人结为夫妻。婚后，Michael接手父亲的事业，厮杀拼搏，重振家业，重振旗鼓。而Kay在家相夫教子，不闻不问丈夫的事情。这看似平淡的爱却深藏着爱意。 Michael 他可以不听任何人，包括母亲姐姐的劝阻，拒绝做面部手术，但是因为Kay 希望他去做，希望出生后的婴儿，以后长大懂事后的孩子见到的父亲拥有的不是一张残缺的脸。他下了决心，果断力行，安排医生，将脸部的骨头打断重新接回。是Kay在Michael 心中特殊的位置，才使她的话产生分量。她是这个世界上唯一一位可以让Michael逆其本性而行的人（She was the only person in the world who could make him act against his own nature.），因为他们的爱情是经过时间考验的。当然， 这另一方面要归功于Kay的贤惠。 就此也摘录下面这段话，Kay的贤惠在此可见一斑。

It was not in Kay’s nature to nag; she let it drop. Also she had learned that Michael was not a man to push, that he could become coldly disagreeable. She knew she was the only person in the world who could bend his will, but she also knew that to do it too often would be to destroy that power.

小说和电影就是通过这些细节来刻画Michael这样一个人物， 一个有血有肉，有情有义，一颗看似冷酷的心里不乏有着柔情的黑帮头目。同时小说也通过塑造Michael这样一位立体多维的人物，来描述世间这两种爱情--惊天动地，静水流深都是爱。

With the advent of high technology comes along a digital age with disruptive changes. One noticeable change is a gradual replacement of paper books with eBooks.  People cheer for the revolutionary invention of an eBook-- no more tree would have to cut down for that purpose, and the convenience of reading from an eBook is obvious-- we can adjust font, color it or make notes without a highlighter or a pen. We can find out the meaning of a new word with a click. What’s more, we can get rid of the book shelf for more space.

But an eBook can have something amiss, at least it won't carry the scribbling handwriting as was in this paper book. 

It was a pleasant surprise when I recognized the book in red Chinese characters on Dad’s glass-door bookshelves. When I took it out and saw my husband’s old-style signature on the front page, I was relished.  It’s like lost and found. The book has been on my reading list after i watched the movie years ago.  More than twenty years have passed by. The paper turns yellow and is no longer fresh. Neither is the memory.  But it is so dear to me, and certainly to him too, who later told me how as a student in the years he frequented that bookstore, where a section of the second-floor was entitled to foreign language books. 

I finished this 448-page novel within two weeks.  Reading an aged paper novel complements the joy of reading a classic masterpiece.

*****************************************************

Quotes:

"Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .”

“Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold.”

“A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults”

 “I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.”

“The lawyer with the briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.”

 “Tom, don't let anybody kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it's personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That's what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes? Right? And you know something? Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.”

 “He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, "Life is so beautiful."

...

Yes, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important.”

“Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.”

“Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.”

“Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!”

“Forgive. Forget. Life is full of misfortunes.”

 “And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.”

 “She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.”

“Like many business men of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient.”

“In this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful.” 

“The Don considered a use of threats the most foolish kind of exposure; the unleashing of anger without forethought as the most dangerous indulgence. No one had ever heard the Don utter a naked threat, no one had ever seen him in an uncontrollable rage. It was unthinkable.”