William Rees-MoggMost of us go through life with a sense of guilt about the places we have not visited and the books we have not read.

    There is something shameful about the fact that I've never been to Buenos Aires,Sydney or Berlin.² It is even more shameful that I have never got through more than a few pages of Proust or Homer's Iliad.³ There are seven shortish prose⁴ works I would advise everyone to read before their thirties. They are liberating books, which open up new worlds of experience and feeling.

    I would put St John's Gospel first, for Christians but particularly for non-Christians.⁵ It is the most vivid portrait of Jesus, by the friend who knew him best.

    Second is Xenophon's⁶ Memoirs of Socrates, including the scene of his death. It is another friend's portrait of the man as well as the philosopher.

    Third is John Locke's⁷ Letters on Toleration, the founding idea of English liberal society.

    Fourth is Francis Bacon's Essays. Pope called Bacon The Wisest, Brightest, Meanest of Mankind, but the Essays are the great Elizabethan example of English humanism.⁸

    My fifth choice, a longer book, is Thackeray's⁹ novel, Vanity Fair ——the essence of England in the early 19th century. My sixth is Mrs Piozzi's¹⁰ Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson. Thackeray portrays a woman as seen by a man; the necdotes shows a great man seen by a woman. I would end with George Orwell's¹¹ Animal Farm. All seven books could be read inside a week's holiday. That would be both delightful and a lifetime's education.

Joanne Harris
    "Make peace with your parents. The older generation won't live for ever."

Libby Purves
    Before you're 30 you should know what it is like to be broke¹² at the end of the week; so broke that finding a 50p piece down the back of the sofa is cause for celebration and a visit to the bargain shelf at the supermarket for a hunk of out-of-date cheese¹³.

    You should have drunk until dawn at least once, and informed a total stranger that you really, really value them because you love all mankind, right? Oh yes, and it's good to have slept all night on a railway station, or a village hall floor.

    Manual work¹⁴ is important, too. Whether for money or as a volunteer, even the most cerebral and dainty of brain-workers should have a spell wheeling barrows and mixing cement or hauling logs all day, until they long for a pint of bitter to l
ay the dust.¹⁵ I used to be a volunteer canal navvy¹⁶ at weekends when I was broke, and it was a whole new world.

     You should know what it is to be utterly alone, in a lonely landscape without television or radio or telephone: a hut up an Irish mountain or on the edge of a distant loch¹⁷, just you and books, your mind gently expanding in the mist. And you
should have declared your love to someone, even if (especially if) it is plainlyhopeless. Just as a gift. Then be 30, grow up, settle down. You've laid good foundations.

Damian Whitworth
    There are certain things that a man simply must have done beforehe turns 30. He should have made love to two women at once, eaten something he shot in an African game reserve¹⁸, nose-hoovered Peruvian narcotics off an Andean ice ledge, and included all the above in a barely-novelised memoir that will land him on the cover of Esquire.¹⁹

     That, anyway, is the kind of list men's magazines tend to dream up. Few of us did these things, nor did we have the stamina or drive or, er, the slightest inclination to do any of them.²⁰

    Of the things I did before 30 I'd recommend living abroad while you can still drive off into the mountains or head for the beach at five minutes' notice. I'd also advise you to do plenty of silly things to impress a partner. It's fine to suffer the humiliating consequences of stripping naked and plunging into the sea off the north-east coast of Scotland when you're 24, but not when you're also likely to suffer a heart attack.²¹

    One important tip for twentysomethings: make sure that you have decent photographs of yourself taken from above and behind²². Your children will need proof that you once had hair.

    But of course, as an optimistic 33-year-old, I know that such lists are nonsense. Thirty is a silly cut-off point.²³ What we need are more lists of things to do before you're 40.

1. Times: 《泰晤士报》。

2. Buenos Aires: 布宜诺斯艾利斯（阿根廷首都）；Sydney: 悉尼（澳大利亚城市）；Berlin: 柏林（德国首都）。
3. Proust: 普鲁斯特（1871-1922），法国小说家，其创作强调生活的真实和人物的内心世界，以长篇小说《追忆逝水年华》而名闻世界；Homer: 荷马（约公元前9－前8世纪），古希腊吟游盲诗人，著有史诗《伊利亚特》（Iliad）和《奥德赛》（Odyssey）。

4. shortish: 相当短的；prose:（与poetry或verse相区别的）散文。

5. St John's Gospel: 《约翰福音》；Christian: 基督徒。

6. Xenophon: 色诺芬（431-355？BC）古希腊将领、历史学家，苏格拉底的学生，著有《远征记》、《希腊史》、《回忆苏格拉底》(Memoirs of Socrates)等。

7. John Locke: 洛克（1632-1704），英国唯物主义哲学家，反对“天赋观念”论，论证人类知识起源于感性世界的经验论学说，主张君主立宪政体，著有《政府论》、《人类理解论》、《论宽容》（Letters on Toleration）等 。

8. Francis Bacon: 培根（1561-1626），英国哲学家，英语语言大师，英国唯物主义和实验科学的创始人，反对经院哲学，提出知识就是力量，主要著作有《论科学的价值和发展》、《 新工具》；Essays: 《随笔》；Pope: 蒲柏（1688-1744），英国诗人；Elizabethan: 伊丽莎白女王一世时代（或其文化）的。

9. Thackeray: 萨克雷（1811-1863），英国小说家，作品多讽刺上层社会，主要作品有长篇小说《名利场》（Vanity Fair）和《彭登尼斯》，历史小说《亨利·埃斯蒙德》及散文集《势利人脸谱》等。

10. Piozzi: 皮奥齐（1741-1821），英国女作家，以H.Thrale夫人知名，Samuel Johnson的密友，著有《已故塞缪尔·约翰逊博士最后20年间生活轶事》等；Samuel Johnson: 约翰逊（1709-1784），英国作家、评论家、辞书编纂者，编有《英语辞典》、《莎士比亚集》，作品 有长诗《伦敦》、《人类欲望的虚幻》等。

11. George Orwell: 奥威尔（1903-1950），英国小说家、新闻记者，主要作品有反面乌托邦政治讽刺小说《动物庄园》（Animal Farm）和《一九八四》。本期《英语学习》登有他的一篇文章A Nice Cup of Tea。

12. broke: 不名一文的，破了产的。

13. 一大块过期的奶酪。hunk: <口>大块，大片。

14. 体力劳动。

15. 为钱也好，自愿也罢，即使那些最聪明、最文雅的脑力劳动者也应该找一整天的时间去推手推车，和水泥或者是拖木头，直到他们累得渴望能有杯苦啤酒来洗尘。cerebral: 聪明的，用脑筋的；dainty: （行为等）文雅的，高雅的；spell: 一段时间；wheel: 推动；barrow: <英>两轮手推车。

16. navvy: <英口>（运河、铁路、道路等工程中的）挖土工，苦工。

17. loch: <苏格兰>湖。

18. game reserve: 禁猎区。

19. 在安第斯冰礁上吸秘鲁毒品，并把上面所说的一切完全白描式地（一点都没有小说化地）写入回忆录，这会让他登上《君子》杂志（专门提供名人访问、时装及生活潮流资讯的一本男性杂志）的封面。Peruvian: 秘鲁的；narcotic 麻醉剂，致幻毒品。

20. 总之，那些是男性杂志常常凭空想出来的几件事情。我们没有几个做过这些事，而且也没有精力或者动力或者，嗯，一丝做这种事的愿望。dream up: <口>凭空想出，虚构出。

21. 24岁时把自己剥光跳进苏格兰东北海岸的大海里，这么做的丢脸后果并没有什么大不了，但到了你可能会犯心脏病的时候，这么做可就不太妙了。

22. 要记住从头顶和背面拍几张像样的照片。

23. 将30岁视为分界线是愚蠢的。