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主播：凤梨君 个人微信号：fenglisama 微信公众号：EnglishQiPa
LIFE OF THE MIND 贤者之思
Why I love books—and which ones you’ll enjoy
By Bill Gates/Seattle
several times a year, Bill Gates releases favorite recent reads, including a summer recommendation list for fellow passionate readers. Gates spoke to TIME about his new list—shared on these pages—his voracious appetite for the written word and the books that have influenced his life and mind.
1 illustration |ˌɪləˈstreɪʃn| （书、杂志等中的）图表，插图 2 mind 智者 3 read a book, an article, etc. that is good, etc. 好的（或有意思等的）读物；好书（或文章等），也可以是阅读这个动作的名词形式 4 Summer： the warmest season of the year, coming between spring and autumn/fall 夏天；夏季 5 voracious |vəˈreɪʃəs| （对信息、知识）渴求的；求知欲强的 a voracious reader 6 appetite |ˈæpɪtaɪt| 1 食欲；胃口 2 强烈欲望
What book do you most often recommend? Who is your most trusted book recommender?
I read Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature a few years ago and got to talk to him about it after, which was a lot of fun. I reviewed it for my blog, Gates Notes, because I wanted other people to read it, love it and hopefully learn from it the way I did. It’s probably my favorite book and the one I recommend most often. I always trust Melinda’s recommendations, even if they seem like unlikely choices for me at the start. The Rosie Project is a great example of that. My kids are old enough now that their taste in books sometimes crosses over with mine. My son is really into history and policy, and has suggested lots of great books that I might have missed.
1 review （对书籍、戏剧、电影等的）评介，评论 2 The Rosie Project: 罗茜计划
What one, two or three books changed your life?
Back to Pinker’s Better Angels. It changed the way I think about the world. He argues that violence in human society is decreasing at a rapid rate, and our tolerance of
violence is decreasing even faster. The idea at the center of his book—that the world is getting better in lots of ways— is part of the motivation for the work Melinda and I do with our foundation.
Obviously, people can’t ignore things like war and terrorism and violence, but we can be hopeful and inspired to keep making progress. Warren Buffett loaned me his copy of Business Adventures by John Brooks many years ago. It’s still the best business book I’ve ever read. It’s a collection of Brooks’ New Yorker essays about why various companies succeeded or failed. The essay titled “Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox” should win an award for most clever chapter name, and the lessons inside the book are even better. I took inspiration from it while running Microsoft. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which, like a lot of people, I first read as a teenager, is special to me in a different way. Melinda and I both love the book, and it’s the novel that I re-read the most. This line is one of our favorites: “His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”
备注：Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox 原文链接 http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/04/01/xerox-xerox-xerox-xerox/
What’s your favorite book from childhood?
It’s hard to pick a favorite, since books, especially nonfiction, were a big part of my childhood. I read the whole set of World Book encyclopedias when I was a kid. My elementary school librarian, Mrs. Blanche Caffiere at Seattle’s View Ridge Elementary School, introduced me to biographies of famous figures throughout history.
encyclopedia |ɪnˌsaɪkləˈpi:diə| 世界百科全书 elementary |ˌelɪˈmentri| 初级的，基础的。 biography |baɪˈɒgrəfi; 美 -ˈɑ:g-| 传记
Have you ever pretended to read a book that you hadn’t read?
I don’t think I’ve ever done that. The biggest problem I have is that I refuse to stop reading a book in the middle, even if I don’t like it. And the more I dislike a book, the more time I take to write margin notes. That means I sometimes spend more time reading a book that I can’t stand than a book that I love.
margin |ˈmɑ:dʒɪn; 美 ˈmɑ:rdʒən| 页边空白；白边
Where do you read? And how? E-book? On a plane?
I keep thinking I should go digital sometime, but I still like to read the old-fashioned way since I write a lot of notes in the margins.I always take a big canvas tote bag of books when I go on vacation. I have a bad habit of staying up really late if I’m in the middle of a book that I love.
canvas |ˈkænvəs|帆布 tote |təʊt| 大手提袋；大提包
Why do you incorporate fiction into your mostly nonfiction diet?
A lot of the reading I do is so I can keep learning about the world. But I love the way good fiction can take you out of your own thoughts and into someone else’s. I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was younger, and then I got out of the habit until I read Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. The detailed world that he created just blew me away. And most of the science holds up! I have another novel on my summer book list this year, The Heart, by a French author, Maylis de Kerangal. It’s incredibly well-written and made me tear up at times. She really makes you care about the characters—the young man whose heart is being transplanted into another patient, their families and all the emotions that that situation creates.
1 blow sb↔away to kill sb by shooting them 枪杀某人 to impress sb a lot or to make them very happy 给某人留下深刻印象；使某人很高兴 to defeat sb easily 轻易击败某人
2 incorporate |ɪnˈkɔ:pəreɪt |将…包括在内；包含；吸收；使并入 3 Seveneves 七夏娃
Do you think reading has been essential to your success, and is it to others’?
Absolutely. You don’t really start getting old until you stop learning.Every book teaches me something new or helps me see things differently. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged me to read. Reading fuels a sense of curiosity about the world, which I think helped drive me forward in my career and in the work that I do now with my foundation.
If you could have a conversation with any author in the world, dead or living, who would it be?
I’m lucky that I get to have conversations with a lot of authors whose work I love. You can find videos of some of those conversations on Gates Notes. One person I’m sorry I never got to meet is the physicist Richard Feynman. He had a brilliant mind and was a phenomenal teacher. His two memoirs, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, are wonderful for anyone who loves science or entertaining stories about playing bongos and cracking safes.
—CLAIRE HOWORTH and SAMUEL P. JACOBS
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