Reading is a pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport:your eagerness and knowledge and quickness make you a good reader.Reading is fun,not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the author's or even goes beyond his.Your experience,compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions,and your ideas develop as you understand his.

Every book stands by itself, like a one-family house,but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate, together they all add up to something;they are connected with each other and with other cities. The same ideas, or related ones, turn up in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in literature, but with different solutions according to different writings at different times.

Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on books somebody tells you you "ought" to read, you probably won't have fun. But if you put down a book you don't like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good time--and if you become as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won't have suffered during the process.

参考译文:
读书是愉悦心智之事.在这一点上它与运动颇为相似:一个优秀的读者必须要有热情、有知识、有速度。读书之乐并非在于作者要告诉你什么，而在于它促使你思考。你跟随作者一起想像，有时你的想象甚至会超越作者的。把自己的体验与作者的相互比较，你会得出相同或者不同的结论。在理解作者想法的同时，也形成了自己的观点。

每一本书都自成体系，就像一家一户的住宅，而图书馆里的藏书好比城市里千家万户的居所。尽管它们都相互独立，但只有相互结合才有意义。家家户户彼此相连，城市与城市彼此相依。相同或相似的思想在不同地方涌现。人类生活中反复的问题也在文学中不断重现，但因时代与作品的差异，答案也各不相同。

如果你希望的话，读书也能充满乐趣。倘若你只读那些别人告诉你该读之书，那么你不太可能有乐趣可言。但如果你放下你不喜欢的书，试着阅读另外一本，直到你找到自己中意的，然后轻轻松松的读下去，差不多一定会乐在其中。而且，当你通过阅读变得更加优秀，更加善良，更加文雅时，阅读便不再是一种折磨。