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How Reading Changed My Life
读书如何改变我的一生
Anna Quindlen
安娜·昆德伦
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.
我在一个美好的地方度过了我美好的童年。我成长的社区是人们梦想中养育孩子的地方——它不大，但是有不少殖民地时期建造的舒适的老房子，屋里有大厅，周围有长了多年的玫瑰，以及宁静的道路。我们走路去上学，夏天的时候就四处疯玩。在那里我们都相互认识，包括大家的兄弟姐妹。当年和我一起上学的人中，有一些现在还住在那里。
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.
但那时候我总觉得我应该到别的地方去转转。尽管平时我也确实到处闲逛了，但我并没什么地方可去，也想不出任何要离开家乡的理由。我是通过读书来游历世界的。阅读《米德尔马契》和《小公主》我见到了维多利亚时代的英国；阅读《安娜·卡列尼娜》我见到了俄国沙皇倒台以前的圣彼得堡；阅读《飘》《蝴蝶梦》和《简·爱》，我就到了塔拉庄园、曼陀丽庄园以及桑菲尔德庄园，看到了那些有着高高天花板的大房子以及在那里发生的激动人心的故事。
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.
到八年级的时候，我为了得到一个修女学校提供的奖学金，参加了一次考试。有一道论述题的开头是一段引文：“我要做的将是我有生以来所做过的最好、最有意义的事情；我将得到的休息也将是我一生中从未有过的最好的休息。”后来，大家在紧张尴尬的气氛中吃金枪鱼沙拉午饭的时候，我听到几个与我同桌的女孩说不知道那段话的出处，也不知道那段话是什么意思。那时我就确定，这个奖学金肯定是我的了。
