The Pleasure of Reading 读书的乐趣

　　All the wisdom of the ages, all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to all of us within the covers of books—but we must know how to avail ourselves of this treasure and how to get the most of it.

　　人类历来的聪明才智，世世代代所喜欢的故事，人人皆可从书本里获得，既方便又经济——但我们必须懂得如何利用这些宝藏，懂得如何才能从中获益最多

　　I am most interested in people, in meeting them and finding out about them. Some of the most remarkable people I’ve met existed only in a writer’s imagination, then on the pages of his book, and then, again, in my imagination. I’ve found in books new friends, new societies, new worlds.

　　我对人特感兴趣，喜欢与人交往，了解人。我所认识的最了不起的人中，有些起先只存在于作者的想像之中，继而出现在他的书中，最后又活跃在我的想象之中。我从书中找到了新的朋友，新的社交圈子，新的世界。

　　If I am interested in people, others are interested not so much in who as in how. Who in the books includes everybody from science-fiction superman two hundred centuries in the future all the way back to the first figures in history how covers everything from the ingenious explanations of Sherlock Holmes1 to the discoveries of science and ways of teaching manners to children. Reading is a pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader. Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author’s or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.

　　如果说我感兴趣的是人，别人感兴趣的与其说是人不如说是事。书中的人，从史书上记载的第一批伟人，到街头科幻小说中描写的两万年后的超人，形形色色无所不包。书中的事，从福尔摩斯的神妙剖析，到科学的种种发现，到如何教育儿童懂得礼貌，五花八门无所不有。

　　阅读是心智的乐事，颇有点像运动：心情热切、知识丰富、思维敏捷才能造就一个好的读者。读书之所以有趣，不是由于作者告诉了你什么，而是由于读书促使你思考。你的想象与作者的想象一道展开，甚至超过作者的想象。你的经验与作者的经验相比较，使你得出与作者相同的或不同的结论，而你在了解作者思想的同时便形成了自己的思想。

　　Every book stands by itself, like a one-family louse, but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something; they are connected with each other and with other cities. The same ideas, or related ones, turn up in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in literature, but with different solutions according to different writings at different times.

　　单独一本书犹如一个独家小院，但汇集到图书馆则好似城市中的千家万户。虽然仍是各自独立，结合起来可就非同寻常了。家家户户彼此相依，还与其他城市相连。相同的思想或相关的思想在不同的地方出现;人生中反复出现的问题在文学中也反复出现，但不同的时代、不同的作品会提出不同的解决办法。

　　Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you “ought” to read, you probably won’t have fun .But if you put down a book you don’t like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good time—and if you become as a result of reading, better, wiser, or more gentle, you won’t have suffered during the process.

　　读书之所以能成为乐趣，只在于你有这样的期待。你若是只读别人说的是你“应该”读的书，那可能就不会有什么乐趣可言。但你若是把自己不喜欢的书放下另换别的，直至找到一本你觉得有意思的书，然后轻松地读下去，那你几乎肯定会乐在其中——假如你能因此而变得更高尚、更聪明、更温雅，那阅读本身就不是一种苦差事了。