孤云独去闲Unit Three Leisure without literature is death and burial alive. —Seneca, Roman philosopher
WHY HARRY'S HOT?
没有文学的休闲生活犹如死亡抑或活埋。 ——西尼加(古罗马哲学家)
《哈利波特》风行之迷
1 J. K. Rowling swears she never saw it coming. In her wildest dreams, she didn't think her Harry Potter books would appeal to more than a handful of readers. "I never expected a lot of people to like them," she insisted in a recent interview. "Well, it turned out I was very wrong, obviously. It strikes a chord with an enormous number of people." That's putting it mildly. With 35 million copies in print, in 35 languages, the first three Harry Potter books have earned a conservatively estimated $480 million in three years. And that was just the warm-up. With a first printing of 5.3 million copies and advance orders topping 1.8 million, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth installment of the series, promises to break every bookselling record. Jack Morrissey, 12, plainly speaks for a generation of readers when he says, "The Harry Potter books are like life, but better."
1J．K．罗琳发誓说自己从来没有过这种预想。她做梦也没有想到会有那么多人对她的书感兴趣。“我从来没有指望过有这么多人喜欢它，”在最近的一次访谈中她仍然这样说，“可是，很显然，我大错特错了。它在许多人心中产生了共鸣。”她说得很委婉。《哈利波特》系列丛书的前三册被翻译成了35种语言，已出版3,500万册，据保守估计，这三册书在三年时间里已经赚了四亿八千万美金。而这还只是个开始。《哈里波特》系列丛书的第四册《哈利波特与火焰杯》初版530万册，加上高达180万册的订单，有望创造新的畅销书销售记录。12岁的杰克·莫里西的话很清楚地表达了他们这一代读者的想法。他说：“《哈利波特》就如同生活，但比生活更美好。”
2 Amazingly, Rowling keeps her several plotlines clear of each other until the end, when he deftly brings everything together in a cataclysmic conclusion. For pure narrative power, this is the best Potter book yet.
