权威BBC告诉你,想提高英语阅读水平,该选择哪些原版书!

老师:如果同学们想要提高自己的英语水平,就要尽可能多地阅读英语原版书,这样才能……

(话音未落)

同学A:原版书太难读了,有些连单词都不认识,更别提看懂里面的内容了。

同学B:这种书我通常只翻几页,然后就没有然后了。

同学C:我甚至都不知道该选哪个类型的书。

当今的英语原版书虽种类繁多,但质量参差不齐,想要选择适合自己阅读的原版书并非易事。不过别担心,权威BBC将为你推荐10本书,文体类型各有不同,但都值得细细品味。以下10本英语原版书,你看过其中的哪本呢?

1. The Willpower Instinct

凯利·麦格尼格尔《自控力》

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Our ability to control our attention, mood, appetite and behavior will greatly affect our health, financial security, interpersonal relationships and career success or failure.

自控力是可以被训练出来的。本书提供了循序渐进的方法,帮助你认清自己的目标,增强自控力,并做出改变一生的决定——无论这个决定是减肥、管理收支、减缓压力、克服拖延症、成为好家长,还是找到你的生活重心。

2. Ann Patchett, Commonwealth

安·帕奇特《联结》

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In her brilliant new novel, Patchett, winner of the 2001 Orange Prize for Bel Canto, traces the consequences of one impulsive act on an American family over 50 years. She begins with a christening party for Fix and Beverly Keating's second daughter, Franny. Bert Cousins, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney, shows up uninvited with a bottle of gin. By the end of the party, he has kissed Beverly. Patchett creates memorable, complex characters in this exploration of the reverberations of betrayal.

在这本绝妙的新小说中,因《美声唱法》获得2001年柑橘文学奖的作者帕奇特追溯了一个美国家庭长达50年的历史变迁,而这一切仅仅源于一次冲动行为。故事开头是费克斯和贝弗利·基廷的二女儿弗兰妮的受礼仪式,一位洛杉矶小律师伯特·考辛斯带着一瓶杜松子酒不请自来。宴会结束时,他已经亲吻了女主人贝弗利。帕奇特探究了背叛带来的巨大影响,并在其中塑造了让人印象深刻的复杂人物。

3. Franz Kafka, Konundrum

弗兰兹·卡夫卡作品集

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"Kafkaesque" is "synonymous with the nightmarish, the ominous, and the bureaucratically bizarre," notes Peter Wortsman in the afterword to his lucid and rhythmic translation of a selection of the Prague icon's short stories, parables, letters and diaries.

“卡夫卡式”就是“噩梦般的、不祥的、充满官僚主义的怪异”,彼得·沃茨曼在后记中如此写道。这本书收集了捷克代表作家卡夫卡的短篇故事、寓言、信件和日记,而沃茨曼的译文清晰明了,韵律感十足。

4. Peter Ho Davies, The Fortunes

彼得·何·戴维斯《命运》

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Davies distills 150 years of Chinese-American history in his timely and eloquent new novel. In Gold, the first of its four sections, Ah Ling, 14, the son of a Hong Kong prostitute, seeks his fortune in California. Silver portrays the 30-year career of the LA-born actress Anna May Wong, who co-stars with Douglas Fairbanks at 19.

戴维斯在这本如约而至的新小说中用丰富生动的语言提炼了美籍华人150年的历史。在四章节中的第一章“黄金篇”里,14岁的阿凌(音译),一个香港妓女的儿子,在加利福尼亚开始了追寻财富的生活。“白银篇”讲述了洛杉矶出生的女演员黄柳霜30年的职业生涯,她从19岁就开始和道格拉斯·费尔班克斯同台演出了。

5. James Gleick, Time Travel

詹姆斯·格莱克《时光旅行》

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Science writer Gleick takes a panoramic approach to the fourth dimension, a subject that fascinated the fin de siècle scientific world. He begins with HG Wells drafting his landmark 1895 book The Time Machine. He includes Edith Nesbit, a Wells contemporary, who invented a time-travel subgenre in her 1906 novel The Story of the Amulet.

科学作家格莱克对第四维空间进行了全景式的描绘。在19世纪末的科学世界,四维空间是一个热门话题。故事始于1895年HG·威尔斯起草里程碑式巨著《时间机器》,结束于1906年威尔士当代作家伊迪斯·内斯比特在小说《护身符的故事》中创造出时光旅行的亚主题。

6. Enrique Vila-Matas, Vampire in Love

安立奎·维拉-马塔斯《恋爱中的吸血鬼》

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Barcelona-born Vila-Matas has published more than 20 novels, and won the 2014 Prix Formentor. This selection of 19 stories showcases his dark yet whimsical wit and genre-blending tendencies. In the title story, a desperate man with two sharp vampire's teeth has a sinful eye for an altar boy. The narrator calls him "Saint Nosferatu". "Like all those in love", Vila-Matas writes, "he is both vampire and martyr".

出生于巴塞罗那的维拉-马塔斯已经出版了20多本小说,并于2014年获得了福明托文学奖。本书精选的19个故事展现了他黑暗而古怪的智慧和喜欢把多种体裁混杂到一起的写作倾向。在该书同名故事中,一个绝望的男人长着两颗吸血鬼尖牙,他总是用邪恶的眼光看着助祭男孩,叙述者称其为“圣·诺斯菲拉图”。维拉-马塔斯写道:“就像所有恋爱中的人一样,他既是一个吸血鬼,又是一位牺牲者。”

7. Ursula Le Guin, The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena, Stories and Songs

厄休拉·勒·奎恩《奥西尼亚:马拉芙里那,故事和歌曲》

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Le Guin is the second living novelist (after Philip Roth) to be included in the Library of America. This first volume, with a new introduction and chronology from the author, gathers her early work, before she turned to science fiction. The Complete Orsinia offers invaluable insights into Le Guin's genius. "My games are transformation and invention," she writes.

勒·奎恩是继菲利普·罗斯之后第二位在有生之年就被收入美国文库的小说家。这本最早的书中加入了作者的新简介和大事记,收录了她在转型为科幻小说家之前的早期作品。《奥西尼亚》一书能让读者以全新的视角欣赏勒·奎恩的天才,有极高的价值。她写道:“变形和创造是我的游戏。”

8.Ruth Franklin, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life

露丝·弗兰克林《雪莉·杰克逊:困扰的人生》

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Known best for her 1948 story The Lottery, and her novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Shirley Jackson wrote literary suspense in the tradition of Hawthorne, Poe and Henry James. Franklin tracks Jackson's mythmaking life from her girlhood in a northern Californian suburb through her marriage to literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman with whom she had four children.

雪莉·杰克逊的悬疑作品沿袭了霍桑、坡和享利·詹姆斯的风格,她最著名的作品是1948年的故事《彩票》及小说《山宅鬼惊魂》(1959)。弗兰克林追溯了杰克逊神奇的人生经历,从她在加州北部的少女时光,写到她的婚姻,又写到和她一起生育了四个孩子的文学批评家斯坦利·爱德加·海曼。

9. Eimear McBride, The Lesser Bohemians

伊弥尔·麦克布莱德《小波西米亚人》

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McBride wowed the literary world with her first novel, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, which won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the first Goldsmiths Prize, among others. McBride writes of her narrator's tentative first roles in student plays, and a year of increasing intimacy with an older actor. As he describes his own childhood, and twisted relationship with his mother, she struggles to tame her own most powerful instincts.

麦克布莱德的第一部小说《女孩是半成品》震惊了整个文学界,她获得了百利女性奖(虚构类)和金匠奖等诸多奖项。麦克布莱描写了主人公在学生戏剧中尝试表演的最早的角色,还写到她有一年与一位年长的演员越来越亲密。当他描述自己的童年以及与母亲的病态关系时,她尽力压抑着自己最强烈的本能情感。

10. Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am

乔纳森·萨弗兰·福尔《我来了》

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Foer's energetic third novel is chock-a-block with modern conundrums. Jacob and Julia's marriage, frayed by raising three young sons, threatens to tear apart over his sexting. Serious sadness, cheeky dialogue and cutting-edge relevance keep this novel crackling.

福尔的第三部小说热情洋溢,书中充满了现代人的困境。因为要养育三个年幼的儿子,雅各布和朱丽娅的婚姻变得千疮百孔,雅各布的色情短信更让他们的感情汲汲可危。严肃的感伤情绪、大胆的人物对话和时髦的话题让这部小说立刻爆火。

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