J. K. 罗琳 [北外13/E1]

The conifer hedges in front of J. K. Rowling's seventeenth-century house, in Edinburgh, are about twenty feet tall.They reach higher than the street lamps in front of them, and evoke the entrance to the spiteful maze in the film adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", the fourth volume of her fantasy series.

J. K. 罗琳在爱丁堡的古宅始建于17世纪，门前的针叶树树篱约有20英尺高。它们高出旁立的街灯，让人想起电影《哈利波特与火焰杯》中险恶(危机四伏)的迷宫入口。这部电影正是J. K. 罗琳所著魔幻巨著哈利波特系列的第四卷。

The conifer hedges 针叶树篱笆

evoke  产生或引起(感情、回忆)

spiteful 怀恨的，恶意的

maze 迷宫，迷魂阵

Goblet 高脚杯

Rowling, who, at forty-seven, is about to publish her first novel for adults—it is set in a contemporary Britain familiar with Jay-Z and online pornography, but is shaded with memories of her own, quite cheerless upbringing—lives here with her second husband, Neil Murray, a doctor, and their children.

现年47的J. K. 罗琳，将出版第一本她写给成人读者的小说。这部小说的背景设在说唱歌手杰斯与网上色情大行其道的当代英国(小说设定在当代英国，一个嘻哈音乐会和网络色情盛行的国家)，但描述中又带有她个人回忆的印记(夹杂了她个人凄惨的成长经历)，那是一段平淡到了无生趣(平淡无奇)的曾经——与她第二任丈夫尼尔·穆莱里，一位医生，以及他们的孩子们一同生活的经历。

is shaded with

cheerless 惨淡的

Jay-Z  说唱歌手杰斯

pornography 色情刊物电影

She has a reputation for reserve: for being likable but shy and thin-skinned, and not at all comfortable with the personal impact of having created a modern myth, sold four hundred and fifty million books, and inspired more than six hundred thousand pieces of Harry Potter fan fiction, a total that increases by at least a thousand stories a week.

她出了名的保守，她友善而内敛，敏感又害羞。她笔下的故事创造了销量超过4.5亿册的当代奇迹，也激发了哈迷们的创作灵感，衍生出60多万本同人小说，且其数量以一周至少一千个故事的数速度增加。尽管她获得了诸多荣耀，J. K. 罗琳本人却对随之而来的名声大噪无所适从。

thin-skinned (easily hurt by criticism or easily made unhappy)