Susan著 小哭译
读这本特伦特.达芙所写的《钟》之前，我看了一眼我的钟，看到的是……一个钟。那就是我看到的全部——一个帮助我知道时间的东西，如果不见了就会真的很不方便的东西。但是《钟》这本书却颠覆了我对钟的以上看法，甚至颠覆了我对许多其它被视为理所当然的简单机器的看法。现在，当我再看一眼钟时，我看到的是一段长达多少个世纪的历史；我看到的是现在这个样子的钟，是成百上千个才华横溢的人们的共同努力。
《钟》是一本令人称奇的书！它的封皮简直乏味极了，但书里面，却充满了关于冒险、发明和探索之类的不同寻常的故事传说。严格来说，它现在的封皮（黄色的背景中间是只银色的闹钟，标题在上面）没有真实地反映出来这本书的实质。在没有阅读文字之前我快速地翻了一下，似乎相当地无趣。可一旦读起来，这些文字所叙述的故事则大大地弥补了它在其它方面的不足。
这本书彻彻底底地震撼了我。我从来没有读过任何一本能象这本这样、可以将我这样紧紧抓住的非虚构类书。很多“什么东西是怎么回事儿”之类的令人感兴趣儿的书，一旦跟这本书相比，就什么都不是了。这本书并不仅仅在讲钟是如何工作的，它还讲了钟背后的历史。不仅仅是讲钟，真的，更多的时候它还讲了人类是怎样报时的基础知识。
如我所言，这是一本历史书，但却没有一点通常历史书的无聊。它非常地有趣儿！！它能抓住我的注意力，让我总想翻到下一页去看看会发生什么。这是绝大多数非虚构类书做不到的地方——讲故事。这本书象讲故事一样地讲了钟的历史以及通常情况下钟是如何报时的：首先它提出了问题，然后它列了出解决问题的人物，接着它解释了解决方案，再接下来提到因此又发生了什么。就这样，它让我总想知道这些人的身上又发生了什么事儿，他们提出的解决方案怎么样了，其它的人在完善这些方案的时候又做了什么……如我所料，他们最后是解决了问题，但又出现了新的问题，然后就再一次地进入到这样的循环过程中去。
一遍又一遍地，我惊讶于不同的发明者各自有着多么不可思议的想法啊。我注意到了在钟的发展历史中的一种模式。通常，伴随着当前的报时方法，会出现一个难题（钟、蜡烛、日晷仪、滴漏）。然后，每一个人都努力地去改进当前的“钟”（再说一遍 ，它并非必须得是一个钟，我笼统地使用 “钟” 这个词儿，代表报时器），但是他们全都卡在同样的问题上了，不论他们怎么样努力地重新设计那个“钟”，就是不行。突然间，一个绝顶聪明的人跳出盒子想问题，拿出了一个了不起的解决方案，创造了一个完全新型的钟，和前面的钟简直没有任何联系。然后这个人详细地说明了他的伟大创意，向全社会做展示，但是当这个人死后或者被遗忘了之后，别人就试着重新设计和制造更好的钟，直到……出现一个新的问题。接着每个人都尝试去改进这个钟以解决问题，然后又有人跳出盒子想问题……(我称之为发明的循环过程)。
这真的非常酷，读到人们怎么从一无所有、到通过太阳和星星、再到通过帮助他们记录太阳和星星的设备、再到非常简易的日晷仪、接着到彻底放弃太阳和星星而去利用齿轮的这类主意、再到使用水和沙和齿轮，再到使用动力和重力，再到使用弹簧……从35英尺高的大钟到小怀表……哇！我从来不知道钟的历史是如此地丰富，其中充满了才华横溢的人和他们卓越的创意，以及愚蠢的人和他们的那些蠢主意，还有……哇！！！要是没有74页纸（这本书就是74页，虽然一半是图）的篇幅，我是没法解释清楚了！
我最喜爱这本书的一个部分是：即使它讲述的是发生在一千年间的事情，它们也能衔接得很自然。作者成功地做到了让你想去弄清楚接下来又发生了什么。如前所述，它象一个故事，故事里套着故事——那些献身于制钟事业的人们的故事、工业化国家的故事。但它实际上比任何一个故事都更庞大，它是人类从无知走到拥有我们现在这么多知识的故事。这个故事有高潮有低谷，我觉得自己已经紧紧地和书中不同的人物以及发明者们连接起来了。我认为作者真的是棒极了，他能够那样地去讲故事，而历史正应该那么讲。历史应该象讲故事一样地讲，而不应该是将大量的名称和日期等无聊的信息丢给你。
好了，这就是我读《钟》这本书的收获。你真的应该去借本回来读一读。《钟》深深地吸引了我，我全神贯注地读了二十分钟，而且，我绝对会再读一遍（哈哈，你可能会花上不只二十分钟的时间哦）。再说一次书名，特伦特.达芙写的《钟》。书名这点信息根本就不会酷到让你想读一读，但是当你想听上去很聪明时，读它就会有所帮助！
【小哭介绍背景】这篇小文留给我的印象非常地深刻！那本晚上已经半夜了，我读完小文后真想冲进Susan的房间和她讨论一下。当然我不能，她已经睡了。第二天我就想，干点什么好呢？她这人一向不肯读非虚构类的书。我借了那么多的非虚构的书，和她讲条件，一周至少要读几本，否则就停掉她的虚构类书的阅读。她是那么不情愿地读了几个小薄本，而那些还都是我从儿童阅览室借回来的很简单的一类！没想到其中竟然能有一本书，让她如此地喜爱，我得珍热打铁啊！可是到哪去找这种能够如此吸引她的书呢？
按照惯例，搜作者吧。我把这个作者在图书馆网内能够找到的书都给列了出来，选了其中两本看着相对简单的让Susan去读。可是后来并没有再收到这类读后感了，我也忘记跟踪这事儿了。如果不翻译，这事可能就被我给忘光光了。明天赶紧问问。
要是学生们上课用的书，能够收到类似的效果，那还用愁孩子们的求知欲不被激发出来吗？《钟》这类的科普小书，要是能够再多一些多好啊！忍不住想起了我的桥梁文化，如果我有时间多写点桥梁小故事，是不是也能为孩子们的阅读提供一定的支持啊？至少会扩大孩子们的知识面啊！
附上英文原文：
Before I read this book, “The Clock” by Trent Duffy, I looked at my clock and saw...a clock. That’s all I see. Something that helps me tell the time, something that would be a real inconvenience were it to dissapear. Something that I need as an every day household object. But this book changeed my whole view on clocks, and even my view on a lot of other simple machines we take for granted. Now, when I look at the clock, I see centuries and centuries of history. I see hundreds upon hundreds of brilliant people that helped make the clock what it is now.
“The Clock” is an AMAZING book! It’s cover is the most boring thing ever, but inside, it’s full of stories and tales of great adventures and inventions and explorers. Seriously, the cover it has now (yellow background with an silver alarm clock in the center and the title above it) does NOT do the book justice at all. I flipped through the book without reading the words, and it looked utterly boring. But what the words said more than made up for all of its other flaws.
This book totally amazed me. I have never read any non-fiction book that have captured my intrest like this. As interesting as a lot of “how stuff works” books have been, they were nothing compared to this book. This book wasn’t just about how clocks work. It’s about the history behind clocks. Not just clocks, really, more about how humans told time in general.
Like I said, this was a history book, but not any boring history book either. It was INTERSTING!! It kept my attention, and made me want to flip to the next page to find out what happened. That’s something most non-fiction books fails to do: tell a story. This told the history of clocks and telling time in general like a story: first it presented the problem, then it presented the character that came up with the solution to the problem, then it explained the solution, and then it talked about what happened because of that. It kept me wanting to know more about what happened to the characters, what happened to the solutions they presented, what other people did to fix the flaws in the solutions…and just as I thought they’re finally fix the problems, a new problem arises, and you go through the whole cycle again.
Over and over, I’m amazed at what amazing thinkers the different inventors are. I’ve noticed a pattern with the history of clocks. Usually, a very hard problem arises with their current method of telling time (clocks, candles, sundials, water clocks). Then, everyone tries to improve their current “clock” (again, it doesn’t have to be a clock, I’m using that term generally), but all of them get stuck on that same problem, and no matter how hard they redesign that “clock”, it just won’t work. Suddenly, this brilliant person thinks outside the box and had a brilliant idea on how to fix the problem, by creating a totally new kind of clock that has nothing to do with their previous clocks. That person then elaborate on that brilliant idea, present it to the society, and after that person die or fade away into oblivion, other people try to redesign and make better that clock. UNTIL…a new problem arises, and everyone tries to improve that clock to fix the problem, and someone thinks outside the box……(the Circle of Invention, I call it)
It’s really cool, reading about how humans went from nothing, to the sun and the stars, to gears to help them record the sun and the stars, to very basic sundials, to completely abandoning the sun and the stars altogether and persue a new idea like gears, to using water and sand and gears, to just using momentum and gravity, to using springs….from big clocks that are 35 feet high to small pocketwatches…WOW! I never kew the histroy of clocks was so rich and full of brilliant people and brilliant ideas and stupid people and stupid ideas and….just wow! I can’t even explain it right without using 74 pages (how many pages the book had, although half was pictures)!
The thing I loved most about this book was that even though it talked about event that took places over entire millenias, they were all connected really well. The author managed to keep you wanting to find out what happened next. It was, like I said before, like a story. Stories within stories. Stories of individuals who devoted their lives to clockmaking, stories of countries that were industrailized, and bigger than any of the, The Story. The story of how humans went from nothing, to what we have now. There were ups and downs, and I felt really connected to the different characters and inventors. I think the author is truly amazing to be able to tell history like that. That’s the way history should be told, not in some boring fashion with tons of names and dates thrown at you, but as a story.
Alright, that’s all I’ve got about this book. Really, you should check it out. It held my interest for the entire twenty minutes it took me to read it, and I’ll definitely read it again (XD It’ll probably take you more than twenty minutes to read it). Again, the name: The Clock by Trent Duffy. That information isn’t just cool to read, it would be really useful when you want to sound smart!
| 外星孤儿 (2013-09-14 10:06:39) |
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写的真好，翻译的也真好。13岁孩子能写出这样的文章，真的非常好。看后我也想找找这本书看看了，搜下有没有中文译本。 问了几个国内的中学生，他们对读同龄人的范文没什么兴趣，一方面课业压的，另一方面不喜欢文学。现在的孩子们喜欢文学和阅读的越来越少了。 |
| 周小哭 (2013-09-14 15:19:23) |
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谢谢外星！！！我前天把这段时间以来翻译的文章介绍给了一些三十岁左右的家长，想看看反馈。发现有没有兴趣，跟家长自身的条件和价值观非常地相关。喜欢读的觉得是宝贝，不喜欢读的当然就是不会给我反馈。我想下一步主要就是写给家长看，这个我开始也是这个目标。那样的话，就以我写的背景介绍为主。而且，这组文章主要还是针对国内的读者。把这个系列翻译完以后，就不在文轩发文了。 |
| 刘瑛依旧 (2013-09-14 19:53:43) |
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你女儿的读后感写得很好，你的点评写得更好。从中可以看出你的良苦用心——孩子能有这种写作能力，跟你这个细心栽培的妈妈分不开。 |
| 周小哭 (2013-09-15 00:24:20) |
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我这是司马昭之心啊，就是想显摆一下这些文章，然后引出来曾经如何走过的这七年呢：）我的目标在下一个系列：） |
| 心桥 (2013-09-18 05:16:46) |
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这一篇的水平不论从论点，角度还是内容都远远高于前几篇，更佩服 Susan 的思考和写作能力了。读书破万卷，下笔如有神。期待她的写作继续随着年龄，阅历和阅读的积累而升华。 |
| 周小哭 (2013-09-18 05:30:05) |
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谢谢心桥！ 正在翻译的下一篇，她的情绪更为强烈了：）是阿波罗11登月的故事。我一边翻译，一边想着你家威廉（估计这本也应该是他的兴趣所在），还一边可惜着，Susan介绍的这些书，国内的孩子们很少有机会读：（ 当初带Susan阅读时，我没有美国孩子阅读方面的背景。一张小小的书单，我即不知道它的存在，也不知道存在着很多，要是当时能够看到分级阅读书单，哪怕仅仅是类似Susan现在的小文，也会帮我不少的忙。我相信还会有如我一般的妈妈存在着，希望这些小文会提供一些帮助吧。 |