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. Books influence each other; they link the past, the present and the future and have their own generations, like families.
阅读是心智的乐事，有点儿像运动:好的读者热情、知识、速度三者兼备。读书之所以有趣，不是由于作者在告诉你什么，而是由于读书促使你思考。你的想象与作者的想象一道展开，甚至超越作者的想象。你的经验与作者的经验相互参考比较，使你得出与作者相同的或不同的结论，而你在理解作者的同时便形成了自己的看法/观点。单独一本书犹如一家一户，但汇集到图书馆则好似城市中的千家万户。虽然仍是各自独立，但是放在一起情况就不一样了。千家万户彼此相依，城市又与城市相连。相同的思想或相关的思想在不同的地方涌现;人类生活中屡见不鲜的问题在文学作品中也反复出现，但在不同时代的不同作品中有不同的解决办法。书籍，犹如家族，把过去、现在和将来连在一起，既互相影响，又代代相传。
