閱讀，并快樂著

Not long ago， I unearthed a notebook I had long ago misplaced： a small blue 1）ledger in which， for a period of about four years， I recorded the title of each book I was reading as I finished it. The record begins in mid-July of 1983， around the 2）outset of the summer break before my 3）penultimate year of high school， and the first book listed is Dr. Zhivago， by Boris Pasternak. I don’t remember reading that book， or why I thought that the reading of it merited the 4）instigation of a list.

Leafing through the notebook provides me with the pleasure of recovering a cache of longlost photographs. Some of the images are out of focus， some feature individuals whose names have long been forgotten， and others provide moments of sharp recognition. In February， 1984， under the influence of a boyfriend who fancied himself a Wildean wit， I read The Importance of Being Earnest. （You never forget your first aphorist.） That March， I read The Trial， which I vaguely recall being recommended to me by some other young man of high seriousness and literary inclination—but precisely which such young man now escapes me. The May that I was seventeen， I read Middlemarch in the space of two weeks， a reminder of how little else there was to do in my narrow English

coastal town. The Wildean boyfriend lived， exotically enough， in distant London， a useful arrangement if one is developing a taste for nineteenth-century novels.

I made no record of what I thought of any of these books； in my private Goodreads list， there is no starring system. There’s no indication of why I chose the works I did， though since I bought most of my books cheaply， in secondhand shops， the selection was somewhat 5）dictated by availability. Most of them were not assigned texts， at least in the years before I went to university， though there is a certain inevitability about the appearance of many of them： it is 6）axiomatic that a young woman who reads will discover The Bell Jar， as I did in September， 1984. This was a curriculum 7）stumbled into： a few titles culled from the shelves at home； others coming my way from friends at school； and yet others recommended mostly by the Penguin Classics logo on their spine.

My list has its limitations. It’s weighted toward classics of English literature from the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth， and， apart from 8）excursions into the Russians and Europeans， it doesn’t range very widely geographically.There was little contemporary literature on it until I discovered the riches of the Picador 9）paperback imprint， while at college. （Milan Kundera， Julian Barnes， Salman Rushdie， Gabriel García Márquez， Italo Calvino， Ian McEwan.） The notebook 10）fizzles out in 1987， around my twenty-first birthday， by which time I was not only studying literature but also reviewing books for a student magazine.

After I found the notebook， I tweeted an image of one of its pages， which covered four months of my reading at the age of seventeen. Among the titles were Great Expectations， The Waves， three Austens， and two Fitzgeralds， as well as books by Elias Canetti， Dostoyevsky， and William Golding， for whom， the notebook reminds me， I had a particular taste at the time. One response： “No fun reads or guilty pleasures？”

It’s a common and easy enough distinction， this separation of books into those we read because we want to and those we read because we have to， and it serves as a useful marketing trope for publishers， especially when they are trying to get readers to take this book rather than that one to the beach. But it’s a flawed and 11）pernicious division.

This linking of pleasure and guilt is intended as an 12） enticement， not as an 13）admonition： reading for guilty pleasure is like letting one’s diet slide for a day—naughty but relatively harmless. The distinction partakes of a debased cultural Puritanism， which insists that the only fun to be had with a book is the 14）frivolous kind， or that it’s necessarily a pleasure to read something accessible and easy. Associating pleasure and guilt in this way presumes an 15）anterior， scolding authority—one which insists that reading must be work.

But there are pleasures to be had from books beyond being lightly entertained. There is the pleasure of being challenged； the pleasure of feeling one’s range and capacities expanding； the pleasure of entering into an unfamiliar world， and being led into empathy with a consciousness very different from one’s own； the pleasure of knowing what others have already thought it worth knowing， and entering a larger conversation. Among my catalogue are some books that I am sure I was—to use an expression applied to elementary-school children—decoding rather than reading. Such， I suspect， was the case with Ulysses， a book I read at eighteen， without having first read The Odyssey， which might have deepened my appreciation of Joyce. Even so—and especially when considering adolescence—we should not underestimate the very real pleasure of being pleased with oneself. What my notebook offers me is a portrait of the reader as a young woman， or at the very least， a sketch. I wanted to read well， but I also wanted to become well read. The notebook is a small record of accomplishment， but it’s also an outline of large aspiration. There’s pleasure in ambition， too.

We have become accustomed to hearing commercial novelists express frustration with the ways in which their books are taken less seriously than ones that are deemed literary： book reviewers don’t pay them enough attention， while publishers give their works safe， predictable cover treatments. In this debate， academic arguments that have been conducted for more than a generation， about the validity or otherwise of a literary 16）canon， meet the marketplace. The debate has its merits， but less discussed has been the converse consequence of the popular-literary distinction： that literary works， especially those not written last year， are placed at the opposite pole to fun.

My list reminds me of a time when I was more or less in ignorance of this 17）proposition. It may not include any examples of what I later learned to call commercial fiction： I did not， for example， read Hollywood Wives， by Jackie Collins， which had been published the same year that I started the list， and I am not sure I had even heard of it. But I can’t imagine that it could have given me more delight than did the romantic 18）travails that ironically unfold in Emma， or that its satisfactions could possibly have been greater than those offered by the lyricism and very adult drama of Tender Is the Night. The 19）fallacy that the pleasures offered by reading must necessarily be pleasures to which a self-defeating sense of shame is attached offers a very 20）impoverished definition of gratification， whatever book we choose to pull from the shelf.

不久前，我扒出一本遺失已久的筆記，那是一個藍色小本子，上面記載了大概有四年的時光中，我所讀過的每本書的名字。記錄始于1983年的7月中旬，上高中二年級前的暑假剛剛開始，我寫下的第一個書名是鮑里斯·帕斯捷爾納克的《日瓦戈醫生》。時至今日，我已不記得自己讀過《日瓦戈醫生》了，也不知道當時自己為什么覺得讀這本書值得記下一筆。

翻閱著筆記本，我愉快得如同重獲一盒遺失多年的舊照：有的照片已經模糊不清，有的照片徒有形象但人名卻早已忘卻，另一些照片則勾起了某些清晰的回憶。我那時的男友以王爾德式才子自許，在他影響下，我在1984年2月讀了《不可兒戲》。（平生頭一次遇到的警句名家，你絕對忘不了。）3月，我讀了《審判》，依稀記得向我推薦此書的另外一個小伙子極為嚴肅、熱愛文學，但我已經記不清到底是哪一位了。那年5月，我17歲，兩周內讀完《米德爾馬契》，這不禁讓我想起那時我在那英格蘭海濱小鎮真是多么的百無聊賴。很奇怪的是，我的才子男友那時住在遙遠的倫敦，不過對于正熱衷于十九世紀小說的我來說，倒也不無裨益。

這些書我都沒有寫讀后感，它們被一一列入我的私人“好書”名單，并沒有分三五九等。至于為什么選擇這些書也沒有規律可循。不過鑒于我的書大多是在二手書店淘來的便宜貨，挑選的書籍多少受貨源限制。書單中大部分書都不是老師指定的必讀書目，至少在上大學前的兩年里，都不是?！?br>