好书在手，温暖一冬

讀书是一种提升自我的艺术。“玉不琢，不成器，人不学，不知义”。一本书有一个故事，一个故事叙述一段人生，一段人生折射一个世界。“读万卷书，行万里路”说的正是这个道理。读诗使人聪慧，读史使人明智。读每一本书都会有不同的收获。“悬梁刺股”“囊萤映雪”，自古以来，勤奋读书、提升自我是每一个人的毕生追求。读书是一种最优雅的素质，能塑造人的精神、升华人的思想。读书的好处多得不胜枚举，那么我们来看看今年冬天，著名书评人Maureen Corrigan给我们推荐什么好书。

Terry Gross （Host）： Travel near and far， literary souvenirs and the crucial companionship of an animal are the subjects of the novels and works of nonfiction on Maureen Corrigans list of early winter book recommendations.

Maureen Corrigan （Byline）： Earlier this week， my teenage daughter and a friend took a bus up to New York. Of course， I had to burden her with anxious advice like‘hold onto your wallet and ‘dont use the bathroom at Port Authority. Maybe it wouldve been cooler if Id just given her Vendela Vidas new novel. The Divers Clothes Lie Empty is both a travel cautionary tale and a fantasy about the infinite possibility that travel offers.

In it， an unnamed woman reeling from divorce flies to Morocco. As shes checking in at her hotel， she places her backpack atop the suitcase in front of her. A few minutes later， she reaches down， and the backpack， containing her wallet and passport， is gone. What ensues is a kind of existential suspense tale in which our heroine is at first paralyzed by the theft and then emboldened to borrow other womens documents and identities. Vidas wry narration lightens up this tense， closely observed tale. Here， for instance， is a description of the heroines plane landing in Casablanca.

When the plane lands， it veers left， then right and then finds its way into a straight line. Your fellow passengers roar with applause. They are clapping because their existence persists， because they are not aflame on the tarmac， because they did not disintegrate over the Atlantic. When the doors to the plane open， theres a palpable collective thrust of passengers toward the front. As you gather your things， someone from the row behind yours tries to cut in front of you. This is the way of air travel. Fellow passengers applaud because they didnt die， and then they cut in front of you so they can exit four seconds earlier.

Jane Re， the Korean-American heroine of Patricia Parks debut novel called Re Jane， also takes a few momentous trips by plane， but her usual mode of travel is the number seven train that shuttles between Manhattan and Flushing， Queens. Jane was orphaned as a child and taken in by her uncle， who runs a grocery store in Flushing. Itching to escape a life of bagging lettuce， the grown-up Jane accepts a job as a nanny in upscale Brooklyn， where she falls for the aloof master of the house and even encounters a cultural theory-spouting madwoman， of sorts， in the attic.

By now， dear listener， youve no doubt caught on to the fact that Re Jane is a wickedly inventive updating of Jane Eyre. But just as Charlotte Brontes masterpiece is so much more than a Gothic pot-boiler， Re Jane moves beyond mere pastiche to drolly explore issues of class， ethnicity and womens autonomy for an unlikely heroine of the 21st century.

While were talking Brontes， Deborah Lutzs new nonfiction book， The Bronte Cabinet， yields up all sorts of fascinating new angles on the famous siblings by closely scrutinizing some of their objects， like Emilys writing desk， Annes needlework sampler and Charlottes amethyst bracelet， fashioned out of the intertwined hair of her two sisters. In her preface， Lutz playfully refers to this method of studying objects to recover the past as thing theory， but not all that Lutz surveys is a thing. In fact， one of her most illuminating chapters discusses Emilys dog， a bull mastiff named Keeper.

Emily and Keeper， in their rough way， clearly loved each other， but in No Better Friend， Robert Weintraub gives the most inspiring true life account Ive ever read of a human-animal bond. No Better Friend is the story of Judy， a purebred pointer who was World War IIs only canine POW. She started out her service as a mascot on a British ship that was bombed during the evacuation of Singapore. The next ship she was on was torpedoed， and Judy spent hours in the water， paddling wounded men over to floating bits of debris. Even more incredibly， she spent three years in a Japanese POW camp， eluding death through her own cunning—she was good at hiding from angry guards—and through the quick thinking of the prisoners who loved her—above all， a young RAF technician named Frank Williams.

When the POWs were marched out of that camp in 1944， Frank risked execution by smuggling Judy out in a rice bag slung over his shoulder. She stayed perfectly still in that hot bag for hours. After the war， Judy received the highest military medal awarded to an animal. I know this summary makes No Better Friend sound like a canine version of Unbroken. And as a dog lover， I say what could be better than that？ All the books on this early winter list begin in familiar territory and then surprise us readers by going off into places we could never anticipate.

Gross： Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University and is the author of So We Read on： How ‘The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. She reviewed The Divers Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida， Re Jane by Patricia Park， The Bronte Cabinet： Three Lives in Nine Objects by Deborah Lutz and No Better Friend by Robert Weintraub.

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泰利·格罗斯（主持人）：短途和长途旅行、文艺纪念品和与动物至关重要的友谊成为莫林·克里根推荐的初冬书单中小说及纪实文学类的书本主题。

莫林·克里根（撰稿人）：本周初，我那十几岁的女儿和一个朋友坐大巴去纽约。当然，我不得不不厌其烦地建议她“看紧你的钱包”，“不要用港务局的洗手间”。如果我一早把温德拉·薇达的新小说给她看，那就更棒了。《闲置的潜水服》既是关于旅游的醒世故事，也是关于旅行产生的无限可能性的幻想曲。

书中，一名还没从离婚阴影走出来的无名女子飞到摩洛哥。她在酒店办理入住手续的时候，将背包放在身前的行李箱上。数分钟后，她伸手下去，那放着钱包和护照的背包不翼而飞。接下来就有点像是存在主义的悬念故事一样，我们的主人公先是因为这个小偷吓得瘫倒，继而壮着胆子借用其他女人的文件和身份。薇达用诙谐的叙事方式使这个紧张又充满细节的故事变得轻松。例如，以下是对女主人公乘坐的飞机降落在卡萨布兰卡的描述。

飞机降落时忽左忽右，然后修正飞成一条直线。同机的乘客掌声如雷。他们鼓掌是因为活了下来，因为没有在停机坪上烧成火球，因为没有在大西洋上爆裂成碎片。当飞机舱门打开，乘客们很显然争先恐后涌向前头。你收拾随身物品的时候，后排乘客试图插队。这就是航空旅行的方式。同机乘客为没有遇难而鼓掌，然后他们插队只是为了早四秒走出飞机。

简·睿是帕特丽夏·帕克处女作小说《简的重生》的韩裔美籍女主角，她也坐飞机经历了一些重大的旅程，但她平常的旅行模式则是坐上往返于曼哈顿和皇后区法拉盛地区的七号列车。简自小就是孤儿，由在法拉盛开杂货店的叔叔收养。总想着逃离将生菜装袋的生活，成年的简找到了一份在高大上的布鲁克林当保姆的工作，在那里她愛上了房子里冷漠的主人，甚至遇到一位住在类似于阁楼的滔滔不绝地说着文化理论的疯女人。

至此，亲爱的听众，毫无疑问你已经想到《简的重生》就是对《简·爱》的一次顽皮而独出心裁的改编。但正如夏洛特·勃朗特的名著远远不是一部哥特式的、为混饭吃而粗制滥造的文学作品，《简的重生》也绝不是东拼西凑的模仿品，而是对等级、种族关系以及女性渴望成为21世纪超乎想象的女英雄的自主意识这些话题的有趣探索。

说到勃朗特，黛博拉·乐特兹新出的纪实文学《勃朗特的橱柜》通过仔细审视三姐妹的一些物品，如艾米丽的书桌、安妮的刺绣小样和夏洛特的紫水晶手链（它是用她的两位妹妹的头发交缠而编成的），展现出各种各样引人入胜的新角度来看待这著名的三姐妹。在前言中，乐特兹俏皮地把这种研究物件还原过去的方法称为物件理论，但乐特兹研究的所有东西并不限于物品。事实上，她最具表现力的篇章之一是对艾米丽的狗的讨论，一条名为基珀的雄性大型猛犬。

艾米丽和基珀以原始的方式，狂热地爱着对方。但在《挚友》中，罗伯特·威特洛柏述说了我所读过的关于人与动物关系的最富有启发性的真实生活记录。《挚友》是关于茱迪的故事，一条纯种波音达猎犬，她是第二次世界大战期间唯一的犬科战俘。她开始服役是在新加坡疏散期间被炸掉的一艘英国船上充当吉祥物。下一艘她登上的船被鱼雷炸掉。茱迪在水中泡了数小时，扑打着水将伤员拖到漂浮的残骸碎片上。更让人惊奇的是，她在一个日本战犯营中呆了三年，用她的智慧——她很善于避过愤怒的守卫——和喜欢她的囚犯们机智地躲过了死神。最爱她的，就是一位名为法兰克·威廉姆斯的年轻英国皇家空军技师。

1944年当战犯们迈步走出营地，法兰克冒着被处死的危险，将茱迪放进挂在他肩上的米袋里偷运出营。她在那闷热的袋子里几个小时一动不动。战后，茱迪被授予动物中最高的军功勋章。我知道这个结尾使《挚友》听起来就像狗狗版本的《坚不可摧》。作为一名狗狗爱好者，我觉得还有比这更好的吗？这张初冬书单上的书目都从我们熟悉的领域开始讲起，然后引领我们到达从未料到的地域，使我们读者感到惊喜。

格罗斯：莫林·克里根在乔治城大学讲授文学，同时是《我们阅读吧：为什么《了不起的盖茨比》会愈久弥新》一书的作者。她在这里评论了温德拉·薇达的《闲置的潜水服》、帕特丽夏·帕克的《简的重生》、黛博拉·乐特兹的《勃朗特的橱柜：九个物件展示三种人生》和罗伯特·威特洛柏的《挚友》。

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作者简介：

莫林·克里根（Maureen Corrigan）二十多年来每周都为皮博迪的获奖栏目“新鲜空气”写书评。她长期任教于美国的乔治城大学，还担任了洛杉矶时报奖和2012年普利策奖（小说类）的评委。她还是《美国传统词典》顾问委员会的委员，也是《华盛顿邮报》的评论家和“神秘”专栏的专栏作家。1999年，她和她的同事罗宾·温克斯因为他们创作的两卷批评文集《浮城谜事》和《悬疑作家》而获得了“埃德加奖”。

2005年以来，克里根一直担任国家艺术基金会“伟大的阅读”项目的顾问委员。她是美国教育学会组织的“了不起的盖茨比”项目的演讲嘉宾，她就菲茨杰拉德及他的作品在全国范围内进行演讲。她还是2011年马里兰州罗克韦尔市举办的F.斯科特·菲茨杰拉德会议的大会发言人。她最近一本书是《请让我一个人待着，我在阅读》，这是一本关于文学的回忆录。