英译汉

　　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.

　　Every book stands by itself, like a one-family house, 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.

　　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, kinder, or more gentle, you won't have suffered during the process.

　　参考译文

　　读书愉悦心灵，这几有点儿像运动。一个优秀的读者必须要有热情、知识、速度。读书之乐不在于，作者在告诉你什么，而在于它促使你思考。你跟随作者一起想象，有时你的想象甚至超越作者。你的经验加上他的经验，可以得到相同或者不同的结论。在理解作者想法的同时，也形成了自己的观点。

　　每本书都隔成体系，就像一家一户的住宅。而图书馆的藏书就像是城市里千家万户的居所。尽管他们相互独立，但相互结合才有意义。家家户户彼此相连，城市与城市彼此相依。相同或相似的思想在不同的地方涌现。人类生活中反复出现的问题在文学中也会不算重现。但因时代与作品的差异，答案也各不相同。

　　如果你希望的话，读书也能充满乐趣。倘若你只读别人告诉你应该读的书，那么就不会感觉有乐趣而言。但是如果你放下不喜欢的，尝试阅读另外的，直到找到中意的为止，然后轻轻松松的读下去，那一定会收获一段美好时光——而且如果你因为读书而变得更优秀，更睿智，更友善，更文雅时，你就不会觉得阅读是一种折磨。