All the wisdom of the times, all the stories that have
delighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to all of us
in books, but we must know how to make use of this treasure. The unluckiest
people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to
read good books.
I’m very interested in people and finding out about
them. Some of the most amazing people I’ve met could only be found in a
writer’s imagination, then in his book, and then, again, in my imagination.
I’ve found in books new friends and new worlds.
Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you
something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works
along with the writer’s or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with
his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as
you understand his.
Every book stands by itself, like a one-family house,
but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate(分開的), in some way they are connected with each other. The
same ideas, or related(相關(guān)的) ones, appear in different places; the
human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in books, but
with different solutions(解決方法) according to different writings at
different times. Books influence each other. They connect the past, the present
and the future and have their own generations (age groups), like families.
Wherever you start reading, you connect yourself with one of the families of
ideas, and in the end, you not only find out about the world and the people in
it, you find out about yourself, too.
Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you
concentrate on(專注于) books somebody tells you “ought” to read,
you probably won’ t have fun. But if you put down a book you don’t like and try
another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it,
you will almost certainly have a good time — and if you become, as a result of
reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won’t suffer during the
process.
1.Which of the following ideas may the writer of this
article agree with?
A．You will
never meet amazing people in your life unless you read.
B．You think
actively instead of getting facts passively（被動(dòng)地）when
reading.
C．You will get
much delight from any book that you are told to read.
D．You can relax
yourself by reading because it involves little thinking.
2.What can we learn from Paragraph 4?
A．We can often
find something connected with ourselves in books.
B．Different
writings at different times share the same characteristics.
C．The same
problems will appear in different books with similar solutions.
D．Reading books
which are written for your generation is more helpful to you.
3.What’s the writer’s purpose of writing this article?
A．To advise us
to enjoy ourselves by reading.
B．To encourage
us to make full use of libraries.
C．To encourage
us to find out solutions in books.
D．To advise us
to discuss books with other people.
