Outside View

Whole

Part 1

Narrator: Accessible. Interactive. Limitless.

Narrator: It's a daunting new world for the traditionalist, but child's play for the download generation.

Speaker 1: It's easier than going into a library and searching through.

Speaker 2: I often have about six or seven books to take with me to school. If I've got them all on here, I just have to carry this.

Speaker 3: There's something more personal about getting a book, and, you know, you can pass them down to generations, whereas these, you've got it all stored on there and there's nothing exciting about it.

Narrator: No one in the industry is suggesting that the conventional bookshop is dead. And digitization would be anathema [令人厌恶的事] to some. But here at the UK's Amazon headquarters is the measure of the threat. They're secretive about sales figures for their e-book device, their top seller, but we're told that downloadable versions of books outsell [比......更畅销] hardback and paperback copies combined – hardbacks by two to one.

Speaker 4: Real convenient, real easy to use … you can change the font size [字号] to suit your eye, you can just flip the pages through … so folks are finding the product itself really convenient, and of course it's delivered in a very convenient way.

Narrator: With a Wi-Fi connection, e-book readers can download a favourite book in less than a minute. Inbuilt dictionaries help with any tricky words.

Part 2

Narrator: Publishers Harper Collins say the industry is undergoing a fundamental change.

Speaker 5: The electronic market is really booming. We're seeing 600 per cent growth year on year [年同比] in e-books this year, and that... this is in a, frankly, stagnant [停滞不前的] bookselling market. So I think we're seeing massive growth there, we're seeing rapid adoption of e-reading as a way of consuming content.

Narrator: The technology means authors like Sophie Nicholls can circulate their work without a publisher. One of her e-books became a best-seller.

Speaker 6: I've been able to put a book together,  get it edited and proofread [校对] myself, put it out there literally with the click of a few buttons, it's so simple to do... and start connecting with thousands of readers. It's so exciting! From a revenue [版税] point of view, I'm earning money from the minute that I've put the book out there. And that's ... that's a huge advantage also for an author.

Narrator: There'll be those who say it will never really catch on. All the evidence points to the fact that it already has. 

David Crabtree, Sky News.

Talk 

    I want you to imagine the scene. We're in a library in south London, and author Jeremy Gooch has finished reading a chapter from his latest novel to ten adults during their lunch break. Each session [a period of time that is spent doing a particular activity 一场] lasts about 45 minutes, and the audience is allowed to bring their lunch to eat while they listen. They lounge [to stand, sit or lie in a lazy way 葛优躺] around on cushions and deep armchairs, and at the end of the session, they leave and go back to work, having enjoyed an unusual but pleasant moment in their working day.

    "Having done these book readings a lot, I've now found that I instinctively write each chapter to last 40 minutes or so. I also try to finish each session on a 'cliffhanger', a moment of suspense [悬念], so that people will come back next week for the next chapter," says Jeremy.

    So is reading aloud and being read aloud to enjoying a revival [重新流行]? As children our parents often read us a story before we went to sleep, and we do the same for our own children. Some elderly people enjoy the company of their sons and daughters as much through their voices as through their physical presence. We also read aloud when learning to read at school, and later in other educational contexts such as language learning. Apart from that, these days we tend not to read aloud.

    But reading aloud used to be very popular, especially among the ancient Greeks and Romans, when silent reading was frowned on and libraries were full of the voices of people reading aloud to themselves. The writer Pliny the Younger was so ashamed of his lack of skill that he hid a talented slave behind a curtain to read aloud a manuscript [a copy of a book, piece of music, etc. before it has been printed 手稿；原稿], while Pliny himself would mime [模拟] the words. Monks in the Middle Ages began to put spaces between words so the manuscripts were easier to read aloud. Jane Austen used to read her novels aloud to check that they sounded right.

    Reading aloud is now being used to help people with learning difficulties or troublesome psychological conditions connect with great literature. It also helps them acquire the confidence to interact in social contexts.

    So now it seems that reading aloud has become popular again, for pleasure as much as for therapy, with lunchtime sessions for adults as well as for children in many public libraries. "I think it has improved my writing style too," says Jeremy Gooch.

    So when was the last time someone read aloud to you?

Questions:

1. What is the speaker talking about?

2. How popular was reading aloud in the past?

3. What are the educational advantages of reading aloud?

4. Why is reading aloud enjoying a revival?

Passage 1

Mike: So how long has your book group been running?

Chris: Well, let me see, it's over 20 years now. I think it's actually one of the oldest book groups around, because it was only about 20 years ago that they started to become fashionable in the UK.

Mike: And how often do you have meetings?

Chris: We meet about once every four or five weeks, although we try to avoid meetings in the summer holidays, and during the run-up to [(重要事件的) 前奏，预备期] Christmas when we all start to get busy with other things.

Mike: And how many members do you have?

Chris: We're ten in all, although it's rare that everyone can attend.

Mike: And what happens during the meeting?

Chris: Well, we usually meet at one of our homes, and we start fairly late, around 8.30, and the host prepares dinner, and sometime during the meal, someone asks "So what did you think of the book?" and that's when the discussion starts.

Mike: It sounds quite informal.

Chris: It is, yes, and sometimes if we haven't enjoyed the book, the meal becomes more important than the discussion. 

But it's fairly rare that no one likes the book, and it gets quite interesting when opinions about it are divided.

Mike: And what sort of books do you read?

Chris: Oh, all kinds, actually, not just novels, although I must admit that being a member of the club makes me read more modern fiction than I might do otherwise. But we also read the classics, you know the novels we all read or should have read 30 years ago, and it's quite good fun to revisit them, to see if our views of the books have changed. We re-read Thomas Hardy recently, and whereas I used to love it when I was a student, this time I thought it was exasperatingly dull. And we read non-fiction [非小说类作品], quite a lot of history and travel writing. A couple of the members like poetry, which I don't, but you know, we're tolerant of each other's choice, and it gives us a chance to try things we wouldn't usually read.

Mike: And how do you choose the books?

Chris: Well, at the end of the evening the person who hosts the dinner – basically, the cook – has the right to choose the next book.

Mike: And that works OK?

Chris: Yes, although there's quite a lot of stress on choosing something that will earn everyone else's respect. And we've got one member who likes science fiction, so we try not to go to his place too often!

Passage 2

   Well, thank you for your kind welcome, and for giving me the opportunity to give this brief tour of Literary England. I can’t claim it’s an authoritative tour, as I’m not a professional literary specialist. However, I have two amateur passions [业余爱好]: one is travel and the other is reading, and English literature in particular. And this lecture is a description of different visits I have made to places in Britain and Ireland, chosen specifically for their close links with well-known writers of what we call the classics of English literature. Just to give you an overview of the lecture, I’m going to start in my home town of London, which is also the home of many well-known writers. But I think that the picture we have in our mind of London has been largely fashioned by the work of Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. Dickensian London illustrated most clearly by his book Oliver Twist, and Shakespeare’s London brings to mind the plays written and performed here, such as Romeo and Juliet. We’ll also have a look at the memorial of great British writers, Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

   Then off we go to Oxford, another city rich in its literary history. I’m going to focus on the greatest of Oxford’s literary alumni, JRR Tolkien, the professor of English who wrote Lord of the Rings, which is now famous throughout the world because of the recent series of films.

   Then we turn south towards the gentle countryside of Hampshire, home of Jane Austen, where her various novels, including Pride and Prejudice are set. She also spent a period of her life in the magnificent Georgian city Bath.[英国乔治王朝时代的巴斯]

   Then we turn north to the hills of West Yorkshire where we find Bronte country, so called because it was the home of the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte. Perhaps the two best known novels are Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, [《呼啸山庄》]also made into successful films. 

    Then up to the northwest, to the stunning land of mountains and Lakeland poets. Perhaps its most famous son is William Wordsworth, [威廉·华兹华斯] whose poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” has been learnt by generations of school children not just in Britain, but around the English-speaking world.

      So that’s the basic route Literary England, although I’ll be taking several days to visit other famous writers whose work contributes to the glory which is English literature. Let’s start…