1 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.

　　參考譯文：

　　1 讀書(shū)之所以有趣，不是由于作者告訴了你什么，而是由于書(shū)本促使你思考。你的想象與作者的想象一道展開(kāi)，甚至超過(guò)作者的想象。你的體驗(yàn)與作者的體驗(yàn)進(jìn)行對(duì)照，使你得出與作者相同或不同的結(jié)論，而你在了解作者思想的同時(shí)便形成了自己的思想。

　　單獨(dú)一本書(shū)猶如獨(dú)家小院，匯集到圖書(shū)館則好似城市中的千家萬(wàn)戶。雖然仍是各自獨(dú)立，結(jié)合起來(lái)便成為一個(gè)有意義的整體。千家萬(wàn)戶彼此相依，又與其他城市的家家戶戶相連。相同的思想或相關(guān)的思想在不同的地方出現(xiàn);人生中經(jīng)常遇到的問(wèn)題在文學(xué)中也是反復(fù)出現(xiàn)，但其解決辦法則隨著時(shí)代的不同和作品的不同而各異。

　　讀書(shū)之所以能成為樂(lè)事首先必須是你期待著從中得到樂(lè)趣。如果你只讀別人說(shuō)是你“應(yīng)該”讀的書(shū)，那大概就不會(huì)有什么樂(lè)趣可言。但如果你把自己感到?jīng)]勁的書(shū)放下另?yè)Q別的，直到發(fā)現(xiàn)一本你認(rèn)為有意思的書(shū)，然后輕松地讀下去，那么幾乎可以肯定你會(huì)感到很快活的。假若你能由此而變得更聰明有為、更和藹溫厚，那么閱讀本身就不會(huì)是一種苦差事了。