Brain Pickings' Maria Popova: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011
Maria Popova is the founder and editor in chief of Brain Pickings, a writer for Wired UK, Design Observer, and The Atlantic, among others, and an MIT Futures of Entertainment fellow, spending far, far too much time curating the web’s interestingness as @brainpicker.
Maria Popova 是 Brain Pickings 的创始人兼主编，也是《连线英国》、《设计观察家》和《大西洋月刊》等杂志的撰稿人，也是麻省理工学院娱乐未来研究员，她花了太多时间以 @brainpicker 的身份策划网络的趣味性。
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I’ve always found reading, writing, and thinking to be so tightly interwoven that, when done correctly, they become indistinguishable from one another.
我一直发现阅读、写作和思考是如此紧密地交织在一起，如果做得正确，它们就会变得难以区分。
Like architecting your life and your social circle, architecting your mind’s life is an exercise in immersing yourself in an eclectic mix of viewpoints and directions of thought.
就像设计你的生活和社交圈一样，设计你的思想生活也是一种让自己沉浸在观点和思想方向的折衷组合中的练习。
In that way, longform is like the most intense of friendships, where the time dedication and the active choice to show up far eclipse the noncommittal acquaintanceship of soundbite culture.
这样一来，长篇就像是最深厚的友谊，其中投入的时间和主动选择的表现远远超过了有声片段文化中不置可否的熟识。
A healthy longform diet must thus include something that breaks your heart, something that gives you hope, something by someone you find a little self-righteous, something by someone with whom you’re a little bit in love—and, ideally, the inability to fully tell which is which.
因此，健康的长期饮食必须包括一些让你心碎的东西，一些给你希望的东西，一些你觉得有点自以为是的人的东西，一些你有点爱的人的东西——而且，理想情况下，不能完全分辨哪个是哪个。
With this in mind, here are the five finest pieces I laid eyes and neurons on this year, which did for me all of the above, and then some.
考虑到这一点，这里是我今年关注和神经元最优秀的五件作品，它们为我实现了上述所有目标，甚至还有一些。
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“Mark Twain in Love,” by Ron Powers (Smithsonian)
《恋爱中的马克·吐温》，罗恩·鲍尔斯（Ron Powers）（史密森尼）
A bittersweet story about Samuel Clemens, but really about something profoundly and universally human: love, timing, and the often tragic misalignment of the two.
这是一个关于塞缪尔·克莱门斯（Samuel Clemens）的苦乐参半的故事，但实际上是关于一些深刻而普遍的人性：爱情、时机，以及两者之间经常发生的悲剧性错位。
And in that story lies a subtle reminder that unless we pursue the heart’s desire with complete clarity of purpose and intention, we’re left forever playing out those could’ve-beens, as Twain did, in our dreams.
这个故事微妙地提醒我们，除非我们以完全明确的目的和意图去追求内心的渴望，否则我们将永远像吐温那样，在梦中实现那些本来可以实现的目标。
“Thus it was Sam’s stubbornness that foreclosed any further encounter with Laura Wright.
“因此，萨姆的固执阻止了与劳拉·赖特的进一步接触。
Yet they did meet, time and again, over the years, in Clemens’ dreams.
然而多年来，他们确实在克莱门斯的梦中一次又一次地相遇。
And dreams, Samuel Clemens came to believe, were as real as anything in the waking world.”
塞缪尔·克莱门斯开始相信，梦与现实世界中的一切一样真实。”
“Post-Artifact Books & Publishing,” by Craig Mod
“后人工制品书籍与出版”，克雷格·莫德 (Craig Mod)
As both a marginalia obsessive and a hopeless bibliophile torn between the love of books and the mesmerism of the web, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of books—or, more accurately, about the function books have traditionally served as a medium for arguing and teasing out ideas of significance and cultural gravity.
作为一个旁注痴迷者和一个无可救药的藏书家，我在对书籍的热爱和网络的迷惑之间左右为难，我花了很多时间思考书籍的未来——或者更准确地说，思考书籍传统上作为争论和梳理意义和文化引力的媒介的功能。
Hardly anyone fuses a bibliophile’s profound respect for books with a designer’s sensitivity to the reading experience and a digital entrepreneur’s visionary bravery more fluidly, articulately, and thoughtfully than Craig Mod.
几乎没有人比克雷格·莫德（Craig Mod）更流畅、清晰、深思熟虑地将藏书家对书籍的深切尊重、设计师对阅读体验的敏感度和数字企业家的远见卓识融为一体。
“Manifested properly, each new person who participates in the production of digital marginalia changes the reading experience of that book for the next person.
“如果表现得当，每个参与数字旁注制作的新人都会改变下一个人对该书的阅读体验。
Analog marginalia doesn’t know other analog marginalia.
模拟旁注不知道其他模拟旁注。
Digital marginalia is a collective conversation, cumulative stratum.”
数字旁注是一种集体对话、累积阶层。”
“How the Internet Gets Inside Us,” by Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker)
《互联网如何进入我们的内心》，亚当·高普尼克（Adam Gopnik）（《纽约客》）
Gopnik is one of my favorite nonfiction authors working today.
戈普尼克是我目前最喜欢的非小说类作家之一。
And this is no ordinary book review of what eventually became my favorite history book of 2011—it paints a riveting connect-the-dots portrait of information’s history and future through such fascinating and surprisingly related subjects as African drum languages, the Morse Code, Marshall McLuhan, and Google.
这本书对最终成为我最喜欢的 2011 年历史书的书评来说并不是普通的书评，它通过非洲鼓语言、莫尔斯电码、马歇尔·麦克卢汉和谷歌等令人着迷且令人惊讶的相关主题，描绘了一幅引人入胜的、点点滴滴的信息历史和未来肖像。
“Yet surely having something wrapped right around your mind is different from having your mind wrapped tightly around something.
“然而，让某些东西紧紧地包裹着你的思想，和让你的思想紧紧地包裹着某些东西，肯定是不同的。
What we live in is not the age of the extended mind but the age of the inverted self.
我们生活的不是心灵延伸的时代，而是自我倒置的时代。
The things that have usually lived in the darker recesses or mad corners of our mind—sexual obsessions and conspiracy theories, paranoid fixations and fetishes—are now out there: you click once and you can read about the Kennedy autopsy or the Nazi salute or hog-tied Swedish flight attendants.
那些通常存在于我们心灵深处或疯狂角落的东西——性痴迷和阴谋论、偏执的迷恋和恋物癖——现在都出现了：你点击一次，你就可以读到有关肯尼迪尸检或纳粹敬礼或被绑住的瑞典空乘人员的信息。
But things that were once external and subject to the social rules of caution and embarrassment—above all, our interactions with other people—are now easily internalized, made to feel like mere workings of the id left on its own.”
但曾经外在的、受制于谨慎和尴尬的社会规则的事物——首先是我们与其他人的互动——现在很容易内化，让人感觉仅仅是本我的运作。”
“Lessons According to Salt,” by Liz Danzico
《盐的教训》作者：Liz Danzico
There is something magnificent and magical that happens when we open ourselves up to the poetry of possibility—of “overlookedness,” if you will.
当我们向可能性的诗歌——“被忽视的”，如果你愿意的话，敞开心扉时，就会发生一些宏伟而神奇的事情。
(Lesson #1.)
（第一课。）
“The saltbox itself as an object is unremarkable.
“盐盒本身作为一个物体并不引人注目。
Alone, it communicates nothing.
独自一人，它什么也传达不了。
Says nothing about its role.
没有提及它的作用。
Its intention.
其意。
Its history as a gift born out of a romance between my maternal grandparents.
它的历史是我的外祖父母之间的浪漫礼物的诞生。
Says nothing of its possibilities.But add people, and it becomes a central iterative device.
没有提及它的可能性。但是添加人员，它就会成为一个中心迭代设备。
The license to change, to iterate, to test, to add, to make, to make over, to create (clearly, with food).
改变、迭代、测试、添加、制作、改造、创造（显然，用食物）的许可。
It gives license and latitude to stray from what has been written (recipes) for those too shy to do.
它为那些害羞而不敢做的人提供了偏离已写的内容（食谱）的许可和自由。
Therefore, it gives strength.
因此，它给人力量。
It gives iterative powers to those not comfortable with version control.
它为那些不熟悉版本控制的人提供了迭代能力。
With its subtlety comes comfort in change.One might say the saltbox, and access to it, is magic.”
其微妙性带来了变化中的舒适感。人们可能会说盐盒以及使用它的方式是神奇的。”
“The saltbox itself as an object is unremarkable.
“盐盒本身作为一个物体并不引人注目。
Alone, it communicates nothing.
独自一人，它什么也传达不了。
Says nothing about its role.
没有提及它的作用。
Its intention.
其意。
Its history as a gift born out of a romance between my maternal grandparents.
它的历史是我的外祖父母之间的浪漫礼物的诞生。
Says nothing of its possibilities.
没有提及它的可能性。
But add people, and it becomes a central iterative device.
但增加人员后，它就会成为一个核心迭代设备。
The license to change, to iterate, to test, to add, to make, to make over, to create (clearly, with food).
改变、迭代、测试、添加、制作、改造、创造（显然，用食物）的许可。
It gives license and latitude to stray from what has been written (recipes) for those too shy to do.
它为那些害羞而不敢做的人提供了偏离已写的内容（食谱）的许可和自由。
Therefore, it gives strength.
因此，它给人力量。
It gives iterative powers to those not comfortable with version control.
它为那些不熟悉版本控制的人提供了迭代能力。
With its subtlety comes comfort in change.
其微妙带来了变化中的舒适感。
One might say the saltbox, and access to it, is magic.”
人们可能会说盐箱以及使用它的方式是神奇的。”
“Wikipedia And The Death of The Expert,” by Maria Bustillos (The Awl)
《维基百科与专家之死》作者：玛丽亚·布斯蒂洛斯 (The Awl)
Picking just one of Maria Bustillos’ many brilliant pieces was excruciating, but this meditation on the future of authorship, content curation, and intellectual innovation is simply exquisite, and tickles my own restlessness about the changing currencies and sandboxes of authorship in the age of information overload.
只挑选玛丽亚·布斯蒂洛斯众多精彩作品中的一篇是令人痛苦的，但这种对作者身份、内容策展和智力创新的未来的思考简直是精妙绝伦，也激起了我对信息过载时代不断变化的货币和作者身份沙箱的不安。
“All these elements—the abandonment of ‘point of view,’ the willingness to consider the present with the same urgency as the past, the borrowing ‘of wit or wisdom from any man who is capable of lending us either,’ the desire to understand the mechanisms by which we are made to understand—are cornerstones of intellectual innovation in the Internet age.
“所有这些要素——放弃‘观点’、愿意像过去一样紧迫地考虑现在、从‘任何有能力借给我们的人那里借用智慧或智慧’、渴望理解我们被理解的机制——都是互联网时代智力创新的基石。
In particular, the liberation from ‘authorship’ (brought about by the emergence of a ‘hive mind’) is starting to have immediate implications that few beside McLuhan foresaw.
特别是，从“作者身份”（由“蜂巢思维”的出现带来）的解放开始产生除麦克卢汉之外很少有人预见到的直接影响。
His work represents a synthesis of the main precepts of New Criticism with what we have come to call cultural criticism and/or media theory.”
他的作品代表了新批评的主要原则与我们所谓的文化批评和/或媒体理论的综合。”
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Share your own Top 5 Longreads of 2011, all through December.
整个 12 月，分享您自己的 2011 年 5 首长读作品。
Just tag it #longreads on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
只需在 Twitter、Tumblr 或 Facebook 上标记#longreads 即可。