Many have lamented¹ the lost art of reading in our social-media-driven, content-hungry world, but few have actually tried to doanything about it.

在社交媒体发达、追求新鲜内容的当今世界，很多人为阅读艺术的日渐式微而感到惋惜，但很少有人真正尝试为此做出什么。

But whether or not you think people aren't reading long-formmaterial as much as they used to, you can probably still getexcited about free reading material. In Grenoble, France, a city known² as the capital of the FrenchAlps, a publishing start-up called Short Édition has installed³ eight free story-dispensing vendingmachines in some of its most popular public spaces.

不过，不管你是不是认为人们已经不再像以前那样喜欢阅读长篇读物了，你可能还是会为免费读物而感到兴奋的。在法国阿尔卑斯山区的首府城市格勒诺布尔市(Grenoble)，一家名为ShortÉdition的出版业初创公司在该市人流最密集的几处公共场所安置了8台免费短篇小说自动售货机。

The strange, screen-less contraptions are the brainchild of Christophe Sibieude (the co-founderand head of Short Édition) and Grenoble's mayor⁵, Éric Piolle. The pair hope that commuters andbystanders will make use of these stories to expand and enrich⁶ their minds while waiting around,rather than tapping their way aimlessly through Facebook or Twitter. Stories are dispensedaccording to how much time you've got to spend reading (one-, three-, and five-minute optionsare available), and the stories are printed out on long receipt-like paper.

这些连屏幕都没有的奇怪装置是Short Édition公司的联合创始人和负责人克里斯托夫·西比约德(Christophe Sibieude)和格勒诺布尔市长埃里克·皮奥勒(Éric Piolle)构想出来的。两人希望上班族和路人在等待的时候能阅读这些故事，开阔眼界、充实思想，而不是一味地刷Facebook和Twitter。这种短篇小说ATM机吐出的小说长度取决于你有多长的时间可以用来阅读(有一分钟、三分钟和五分钟可选)。这些故事是用类似收据小票的长纸条打印的。

"The idea came to us in front of a vending⁴ machine containing chocolate bars and drinks,"Sibieude told AFP. "We said to ourselves that we could do the same thing with good qualitypopular literature to occupy these little unproductive moments."

西比约德告诉法新社的记者：“站在一个巧克力棒和饮料自动售货机前时，我们想出了这一创意。我们告诉自己，我们同样可以做高质量的大众文学读物ATM机，来打发这些零碎的闲暇时光”。