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How Reading Changed My Life
讀書如何改變我的一生
Anna Quindlen
安娜·昆德倫
I had a lovely childhood in a lovely place. The neighborhood where I grew up was the sort of place in which people dream of raising children—a small but satisfying spread of center—hall colonials, old roses, and quiet roads. We walked to school, wandered wild in the summer. We knew everyone and all their brothers and sisters, too. Some of the people I went to school with still live there.
我在一個美好的地方度過了我美好的童年。我成長的社區是人們夢想中養育孩子的地方——它不大，但是有不少殖民地時期建造的舒適的老房子，屋里有大廳，周圍有長了多年的玫瑰，以及寧靜的道路。我們走路去上學，夏天的時候就四處瘋玩。在那里我們都相互認識，包括大家的兄弟姐妹。當年和我一起上學的人中，有一些現在還住在那里。
Yet, there was always in me the sense that I ought to be somewhere else. And wander I did, although, in my everyday life, I had nowhere to go and no imaginable reason on earth why I should want to leave. I wandered the world through books. I went to Victorian England in the pages of Middlemarch and A Little Princess, and to Saint Petersburg before the fall of the tsar with Anna Karenina. I went to Tara, and Manderley, and Thornfield Hall, all those great houses, with their high ceilings and high drama, as I read Gone with the Wind, Rebecca, and Jane Eyre.
但那時候我總覺得我應該到別的地方去轉轉。盡管平時我也確實到處閑逛了，但我并沒什么地方可去，也想不出任何要離開家鄉的理由。我是通過讀書來游歷世界的。閱讀《米德爾馬契》和《小公主》我見到了維多利亞時代的英國；閱讀《安娜·卡列尼娜》我見到了俄國沙皇倒臺以前的圣彼得堡；閱讀《飄》《蝴蝶夢》和《簡·愛》，我就到了塔拉莊園、曼陀麗莊園以及桑菲爾德莊園，看到了那些有著高高天花板的大房子以及在那里發生的激動人心的故事。
When I was in eighth grade I took a scholarship test for a convent school, and the essay question began with a quotation: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." Later, over a stiff and awkward lunch of tuna-fish salad, some of the other girls at my table were perplexed by the source of the quotation and what it meant, and I was certain, at that moment, that the scholarship was mine.
到八年級的時候，我為了得到一個修女學校提供的獎學金，參加了一次考試。有一道論述題的開頭是一段引文：“我要做的將是我有生以來所做過的最好、最有意義的事情；我將得到的休息也將是我一生中從未有過的最好的休息。”后來，大家在緊張尷尬的氣氛中吃金槍魚沙拉午飯的時候，我聽到幾個與我同桌的女孩說不知道那段話的出處，也不知道那段話是什么意思。那時我就確定，這個獎學金肯定是我的了。
