雅思阅读素材：美国侦探小说大师的阅读清单

　　安娜·凯瑟琳·格林描绘了19世纪的顾问侦探;威尔基·科林斯尝试并改造了这个题材;达希尔·哈米特在20世纪重新创作了该题材;福尔摩斯系列让侦探小说在英国和美国都很流行;阿曼达·克罗斯和莉莲·奥唐奈打开了一扇门，让马西娅·马勒、琳达·巴尔内斯、苏·格拉夫顿和我能够用新的方式挑战这种题材。

　　What makes a good detective novel?

　　怎样才能写出一部好看的侦探小说?

　　Believable characters first, a good story, an understanding of how to pacedramatic action. I like commitment by a writer, to the form, to the story —there are lots of slick writers of crime fiction who aren't writing out ofpassion, but for the market. They write good English sentences, but for me, thelack of commitment makes them uninteresting.

　　首先要有可信的人物，然后得有个好故事，而且要知道如何推动情节发展。我喜欢作家的投入，对这种题材和这个故事的投入——有很多圆滑的犯罪小说作家不是出于热爱而是为了市场写作。他们写出了很好的英文句子，但是在我看来，他们不够投入，所以写出的小说没有趣味。

　　Of the books you've written, which is your favorite?

　　你最喜欢自己写的哪本小说?

　　My books all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if I had tochoose, I'd pick "Hardball." It's very personal because the back story is in thecivil rights movement in Chicago in the 1960s. That's when I first came here,working as a volunteer on the city's extremely turbulent South Side.

　　我的书各有优缺点，但是如果我必须选一本的话，我会选《强硬手段》。它非常有个人色彩，因为它是以20世纪60年代芝加哥的民权运动为背景的。那时候我刚到这里，在极度混乱的南区做志愿者。

　　You earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. Do you stillenjoy reading history? Who are your favorite historians to read?

　　你在芝加哥大学获得了历史学博士学位。现在你还喜欢读历史学方面的书吗?你最喜欢读哪些史学家的作品?

　　Richard Hofstadter was a great stylist; 2014 marks the 50th anniversary ofhis "Paranoid Style in American Politics," which is as insightful a dissectionof our country today as it was when he first published it. My dissertation dealtwith the 19th-century roots of fundamentalism in America. I read a fair amountof natural history as background — Darwin, some of the early geologists, a lotof the moral philosophers. I still like to read natural history — Neil Shubin's"Your Inner Fish" is also on my night stand.

　　理查德·霍夫施塔特有独特的风格。2014年是他的《美国政治的偏执风格》出版50周年。这本书是对我们国家的深刻剖析，和它刚出版时一样意义重大。我的学位论文与19世纪美国基要主义的根源有关。为此我读了大量自然历史方面的书——达尔文的书、一些早期地质学家的书和很多道德哲学家的书。现在我仍然喜欢读自然历史方面的书，尼尔·舒宾的《你是怎么来的》也在我的床头柜上。

　　What do you like to read when you travel?

　　你旅行的时候喜欢读什么书?

　　Partway through "Wolf Hall" I went to England on tour. I carried that big,fat book across the Atlantic, couldn't wait to finish my events so I could goback to it — I'd read until I couldn't keep my eyes open.

　　《狼厅》读到一半时，我去英国旅行。我带着那本厚重的书越过大西洋，往往是活动还没结束我就迫不及待地想回去读它，一直读到眼睛睁不开才停下来。

　　What do you like reading right before bed?

　　你喜欢在入睡前读什么书?

　　Short stories, mostly. Joan Wickersham's "The News From Spain" and JaanKross's "The Conspiracy" are two that I've just finished. I have insomnia, andsometimes at 3 in the morning, I read from "The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon," ajournal kept by a woman at the 11th-century Japanese imperial court, and thenwrite in my own journal in her style: Seven Things That Bring Me Pleasure; EightThings Over Which I Have No Control.

　　大多是短篇小说。我刚读完的两本——琼·威克沙姆的《来自西班牙的消息》和扬·克罗斯的《阴谋》。我经常失眠，有时会在凌晨3点读清少纳言的《枕草子》，它是11世纪日本宫廷的一个女子写的日记，然后我也用她的风格写日记：给我带来快乐的七件事;我完全无法控制的八件事。

　　What kind of reader were you as a child?