比爾·蓋茨的夏季讀書清單

Last year, there was only one book on my summer reading list that you could reasonably call a beach read. This year I tried to pick a few more things that are on the lighter side. Each of these books made me think or laugh or, in some cases, do both. I hope you find something to your liking here. And if it’s not summer where you live, this list will still be here six months from now…
去年，在我的夏季讀書清單中你只能找到一本讀起來還算是輕松的。今年，我努力多挑了幾本簡單點的。這些書要么能讓我認真思考要么能讓我放聲大笑，有時兩者兼有。我希望在這里你能找到一些你喜歡的。如果你所生活的地方還沒到夏天，那你還有六個月的時間來看這份清單……

Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh.
《夸張和一半》，作者：阿莉·布洛什

The book, based on Brosh’s wildly popular website, consists of brief vignettes and comic drawings about her young life. The adventures she recounts are mostly inside her head, where we hear and see the kind of inner thoughts most of us are too timid to let out in public.
這本書的寫作基礎來源于布洛什十分受歡迎的網站，上面有大量簡短的插畫和滑稽的漫畫，描述的是她早年的生活。她所敘述的故事大多都是刻在她腦海里的，從中我們能聽到并明白她的內心想法。而這一點，我們大多數人往往過于羞澀而不敢將自己的內心想法向外界宣泄。

You will rip through it in three hours, tops. But you’ll wish it went on longer, because it’s funny and smart as hell. I must have interrupted Melinda a dozen times to read to her passages that made me laugh out loud.
這本書，最多三個小時你就能讀完。但你會希望它再多講一些，因為這本書寫得既幽默風趣又富有智慧。每當讀到令我大笑不已的部分，我總要打斷梅琳達讀給她聽。

The Magic of Reality, by Richard Dawkins.
《現實的魔法：真相》，作者：克林頓·道金斯

Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford, has a gift for making science enjoyable. This book is as accessible as the TV series Cosmos is for younger audiences—and as relevant for older audiences. It’s an engaging, well-illustrated science textbook offering compelling answers to big questions, like “how did the universe form?” and “what causes earthquakes?”
道金森是牛津大學的教授，著名的演化生物學家。在他的筆下，科學變得生動有趣。這本書就同科學紀錄片《宇宙時空之旅》那樣好理解，老少皆宜。這是一本十分引人入勝、配圖精彩的科學手冊，對一些深奧的問題給出了十分有力的回答，比如，“宇宙是如何形成的？”、“什么引發的地震？”。

It’s also a plea for readers of all ages to approach mysteries with rigor and curiosity. Dawkins’s antagonistic (and, to me, overzealous) view of religion has earned him a lot of angry critics, but I consider him to be one of the great scientific writer of all time.
同時，這本書還極力使各個年齡段的讀者在靠近神秘的事物時，既帶著好奇心同時又不失嚴謹。道金森反宗教的態度受到了許多人憤怒的抨擊，但我認為他是從始至今最棒的科學作家之一。

What If?, by Randall Munroe.
《如果的事》，作者：蘭達爾·門羅

The subtitle of the book is “Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions,” and that’s exactly what it is. People write Munroe with questions that range over all fields of science: physics, chemistry, biology. Questions like, “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” (The answer, it turns out, is “high enough that it would disintegrate before it hit the ground.”)
這本書的副標題是“對荒謬的假設性問題作出的十分科學性的解答”，的確如此。人們給門羅提出的問題涵蓋了科學的各個范圍：物理學，化學，生物學。提到的問題比如說，“烹飪牛排的時候需要拋多高才合適？”（這里給出的答案是“高到在牛排落回鍋里摔成碎肉之前的高度。”）

Munroe’s explanations are funny, but the science underpinning his answers is very accurate. It’s an entertaining read, and you’ll also learn a bit about things like ballistics, DNA, the oceans, and the atmosphere.
門羅的解答很風趣，但其中所蘊含的科學很準確。這本書能給你帶來愉悅，同時你還能學到些東西，比如說，彈道學，DNA，海洋，以及大氣層等。