買書易，讀書難？

買書易，讀書難？

“買書如山倒，讀書如抽絲”已經(jīng)成為越來越多現(xiàn)代人的“閱讀病”。FT副主編Alice Fishburn給自己訂下戒律：除工作和人情需要外，2014年不買新書。這對治療“閱讀病”有效嗎？

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

heteronormative 異性戀的

peter out 逐漸消失

clog up 堵塞

forlornly 孤苦伶仃地

jostle 擁擠、爭奪

hydra 九頭蛇，喻難以根除之禍害

jettison 廢棄

閱讀即將開始，建議您計算一下閱讀整篇文章所用時間，并對照我們在文章最后給出的參考值來估算您的閱讀速度。

Shelf improvement

By Alice Fishburn

In 2013, Nielsen data show we bought 323 million books. Many of them appear to be on my bedside table

* * *

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I do not have a good track record with New Year’s resolutions. But this summer, for probably the very first time, one of my pledges is still going strong. I have not bought a single book since last December.

It was as I tried to squeeze all 784 pages of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch – my final purchase of 2013 – on to an already overcrowded bookshelf that I realised I had a problem. Piles of books were all over the house, many of them unread. There were unopened political doorstops; texts from the undergraduate canon with embarrassing student notes on 10 pages – “heteronormative cliché!” was a particular favourite – before my attention petered out; stacks of classics consigned to the “one day when I have time” category. Clearly my supply and demand assessments were way, way off.

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And so the pact began. My rules were simple. Books could be accepted as gifts or used when needed for work. They could be purchased for others, but not as a backhanded way of smuggling them into my own library. My fellow Brits may have spent ￡2.2bn on books in 2013 but I was no longer going to be one of them. Every page I turned in 2014 had to come from those already inside my house.

Imposing artificial restrictions to create some semblance of order on the stuff that clogs up our lives is nothing new. I’d even attempted it before with some success: vowing to use up every last bar of novelty soap and oddly scented bottle of moisturiser before shelling out for new ones. But I found that cleanliness is a lot easier to manage than literary predilection.

When it comes to possessions, things are made worse by the fact that my generation awkwardly straddles a divide. Old enough to remember the mix tape but young enough to be digital natives, we have managed to accumulate in both camps. Box sets sit forlornly by our televisions as we click through the almost infinite offerings of Netflix. Photo albums jostle for space while we download image after image on to our laptops. Even among the most fanatical technophiles, it is rare to go into a house with not a single book in sight.

Enter ever more elaborate systems of management. When it comes to literature, many book lovers curate the deluge of material that surrounds them. Some plough their way through one particular author or read exclusively about the Middle East or Victorian statesmen. Others organise their shelves by spine colour or religiously revisit the same five favourites annually. My new tactic of reading only what I already own turns out not to be new at all: Susan Hill wrote a whole book on the subject, Howards End is on the Landing, in 2009. (For obvious reasons, I haven’t been able to buy it.)

But coping strategies often dissolve in the face of temptation. And temptation is everywhere. There is always another review, recommendation or must-read list. Despite the habitual gloom that surrounds publishers, sales and our reading habits, there is also no shortage of material. A recent study by the International Publishers Association showed that the UK published more new titles and re-editions per person in 2012 than any other country. In 2013, Nielsen data show we bought 323 million books.

Many of them appear to be on my bedside table. There is always the decluttering option of the ebook, which accounted for a quarter of books bought in the UK last year. But an over-crammed and under-read Kindle can be as guilt-inducing as a buckling shelf. Then there is the hydra that is online reading. Chop off the head of one must-click article and there are immediately five more links clamouring in its place. Gone are the days when you could tick anything off your reading list completely: the internet is the gift that won’t stop giving.

. . .

And so the fightback begins.

For me, strategy piled on top of strategy as I started to alternate first fiction and non-fiction, then locations and periods. I focused on the uncracked spines, only heading for an old favourite when the novelty got too much. A typical pattern consisted of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter (an undergraduate casualty), followed by Ted Sorensen’s memoirs (purchased summer 2009 for holiday, jettisoned as too heavy for suitcase) and then Sense and Sensibility (much better the second time around).

Seven months in, I’ve probably got through about 20 previously neglected books. The bank account is a little healthier, the shelves under no additional strain and my sense of guilt considerably smaller. Next year I may even tackle my wardrobe. And the local bookseller has nothing to worry about. Five months to go and I’ll be knocking down his door. Unless someone wants to give me the new JK Rowling?

請根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內容，完成以下自測題目：

1. Why hasn’t the author bought any book since last December?

a. Because she doesn’t have money.

b. Because she is not interested in reading.

c. Because she already has too many.

2. What is her tactic of coping with so many unread books?

a. Purchase more books.

b. Read only what she has.

c. Hand out the books to friends.

3. Why does the author describe online reading as “hydra”?

a. Because you could tick everything off your reading list completely online.

b. Because the Internet is always giving you new articles to read.

c. Because there are too many ads on the Internet which you can’t avoid.

4. Which one of the following statements is true according to the author?

a. People these days don’t want to buy new books anymore.

b. British people prefer surfing on the Internet rather than reading books.

c. The author feels better when she started to practice her new reading tactic.

[1] 答案c. Because she already has too many.

解釋：全文主旨在于如何面對“買書如山倒，讀書如抽絲”的困境，因此作者決定不買新書是因為她已經(jīng)擁有太多書，而很多還沒讀。

[2] 答案a. Purchase more books.

解釋：文章第三段說明作者的策略是只接受作為禮物的新書和為工作、朋友買書，除此之外，自己不再買新書。

[3] 答案b. Because the Internet is always giving you new articles to read.

解釋：文章倒數(shù)第四段將在線閱讀比作hydra，因為網(wǎng)絡上有無窮無盡的延伸閱讀，關掉一個會冒出五個，就像九頭蛇一樣砍掉一只頭會冒出更多。

[4] 答案c. The author feels better when she started to practice her new reading tactic.

解釋：根據(jù)文意，英國人去年共買了約3億本書，所以人們并沒有不愿買新書，也未提及英國人更愛網(wǎng)上閱讀。從文末可知，作者克制買新書后，讀了不少已有的書，省了錢，歉疚感也更小了。