実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (3/27, 28)
NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。 Lesson 24のテーマは、‘Book Clubs at Work’（職場の読書会）でした。Vignetteでは、職場で読書会を開くことがもたらすメリットや具体的な運営方法などが話題になりました。 Talk the Talkでは、杉田先生、Heatherさんが読書の効能などについて話されています。
Book Clubs at Work
（S: 杉田敏先生 H: Heather Howardさん）
S: In our current vignette, Alyce Collins and Lidia Grace announce the upcoming formation of A&A’s first workplace book club.
The marketing and communications staff will be the guinea pigs for the project because they are a very literary group, Collins says.
You like to read a lot, don’t you, Heather?
H: I do. It’s one of my greatest pleasures in life.
If I need to be frugal, some months, I have to stay away from bookstores both the brick-and-mortar variety and online because it is very hard for me to not buy something once I start browsing around.
It doesn’t matter whether I’ve got a stack of still unread books waiting, which I almost always do.
And buying me presents is very easy; just get me a gift certificate for more books.
Even my seven-year-old daughter, when she was talking about last year’s Christmas gifts, said unprompted, “Mommy, you want books, right?”
My special favorites are books about European history, and medical and scientific breakthroughs.
I also like fantasy.
I used to read that genre incessantly.
It’s been a long time since I read a mystery.
Might be nice to get a few books in that area again.
S: You know, I’m sometimes asked by young people what they should read.
My advice is: Anything and everything.
Long novels, short stories, romantic comedies, mysteries, autobiographies, jokes, nonfiction and even pages from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations….
I believe in what essayist Joseph Addison said: Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
H: Oh, yes, absolutely.
One of my favorite quotes is “All knowledge is ultimately self-knowledge.”
I heard that and I thought yes, yes, the more we learn, the more we understand what motivates us, what principles we agree or disagree with.
And probably most important, what do we need to work on, how can we be better people.
So I completely agree―we should read as widely as we can.
Though I don’t think horror stories are ever going to be a big part of my reading lineup.
I admire the skill involved in writing a great horror tale.
I just don’t like being scared.
S: My favorite Will Rogers quote is the one in the vignette, “A man only learns in two ways, one by reading and the other by association with smarter people.”
That jibes with the advice my first American boss gave me: Hang with people smarter than you.
Now, have you ever participated in a workplace book club, Heather?
H: No, actually.
I was invited to join one once, but it was outside my company and I couldn’t make it to the meetings.
It might not be a bad idea to suggest one in my office, which also has a lot of avid readers.
We often recommend books to each other, and I’ve almost always enjoyed my colleagues’ selections.
If people are strapped for time, one option might be a book club that only tackles books that all the participants have already read.
Literary classics like the works of Jane Austen, for example, or Thackeray.
Then it wouldn’t take as long for people to prepare for the discussions.
Words and Expressions
jibe with…: ～と一致する、～と調和する
お疲れ様でした。
お読み下さり、ありがとうございました♪
