VOA标准英语2012--Virginia City Tops Amazon's 'Well Read' List

 

Virginia City Tops Amazon's 'Well Read' List

Americans love lists - of the top 50 colleges, the top 10 recording¹ artists, the top 100 movies of the millennium², and on and on. These lists sell a lot of magazines, because there’s always room for disagreement about the rankings that some expert or editor has put together.

So we can’t say for sure that the latest list of America’s smartest cities is correct, but it’s food for lively debate. Especially since there are other lists of our brainy metropolitan³ areas that have completely different rankings.

The latest list, by the online bookseller Amazon, doesn’t exactly use the word “smartest” to describe cities. It calls the top ones the most “well-read,” basing that conclusion on sales of books, magazines, newspapers, and electronic tablet readers.

Assuming that people actually read the books and periodicals they buy, there would seem to be a logical connection between buying these things and a community’s overall smarts. 

It probably won’t surprise you that six of the top 10 cities on Amazon’s list are big college or university towns: Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard University, finished second. Berkeley, California, where the research-heavy University of California campus is located, came in third.

But the winning community - the one with the most voracious⁴ appetite for books and newspapers and such - has only two or three small branch campuses of larger colleges, plus a theological seminary. Alexandria, Virginia, though, does sit just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where a lot of smart Alexandrians work. 

In fact, another list of smart places, the 2011 “America’s Most Literate⁵ Cities” ranking by Central Connecticut University, has the city of Washington right at the top. Its creators write that there appears to be a connection between wealth, as well as literacy, in achieving community brainpower.

Yet gritty industrial cities such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and ones that rarely make the headlines such as Knoxville, Tennessee, and Bellevue, Washington, finished in the Top 20 on Amazon’s list of “Most Well-Read” U.S. cities. You can bet that they’re promoting it, too.

1 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

2 millennium   

n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世

参考例句：

• The whole world was counting down to the new millennium.全世界都在倒计时迎接新千年的到来。
• We waited as the clock ticked away the last few seconds of the old millennium.我们静候着时钟滴答走过千年的最后几秒钟。

3 metropolitan   

adj.大城市的，大都会的

参考例句：

• Metropolitan buildings become taller than ever.大城市的建筑变得比以前更高。
• Metropolitan residents are used to fast rhythm.大都市的居民习惯于快节奏。

4 voracious   

adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的

参考例句：

• She's a voracious reader of all kinds of love stories.什么样的爱情故事她都百看不厌。
• Joseph Smith was a voracious book collector.约瑟夫·史密斯是个如饥似渴的藏书家。

5 literate   

n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的

参考例句：

• Only a few of the nation's peasants are literate.这个国家的农民中只有少数人能识字。
• A literate person can get knowledge through reading many books.一个受过教育的人可以通过读书而获得知识。