Ten years ago, many thought that the age of the physical book was coming to an end. The objects that had been the companions of millions of readers for hundreds of years were about to die out. Soon, we’d all be reading on little electronic screens and laughing at the memory of places called “libraries” and “bookshops”.
But it seems that rumors of the death of the book are exaggerated. At least in the UK, as The Guardian noted, sales of e-books are falling while sales of physical books are rising. More surprisingly, it’s young people who are buying the most physical books. More than 60 percent of 16-to-24-year-olds preferred print books to e-books. The most popular reason given was: “I like to hold the product.”
Books become very personal objects to lovers of reading. It often starts with the way they acquire them. Many buyers of books like to sign their name on the inside cover when they’ve bought one. And we carry books around with us everywhere.
If the cover gets bent or there’s a stain made on the pages from coffee or food, all the better. These accidents make the book—our book—even more personal. It’s as if readers of physical books make friends with them.
Of course, some could say that the devices on which people read books, like Kindles and iPads, are also objects that we become fond of. But it isn’t quite the same. A Kindle can hold as many pieces of writing as a whole library. But a story we remember from our time turning its pages in our favorite armchair enters our memory forever. Physical books are as precious to some readers as items of jewelry or photographs of family members.
This “friendship” people develop with books isn’t just sentimental. Research has shown that readers remember more information read from physical books than electronic books.
However, there’s no doubt that e-books are here to stay. They aren’t simply a “here today, gone tomorrow” phenomenon. But it’s also certain physical books, which have been in production since the fifteen century, are here to stay, too.
1. What is paragraph 1 about?| A．Rumors of the death of physical books. | B．The bright future of electronic books. |
| C．Advantages of reading physical books. | D．The disappearance of electronic books. |
| A．The growing popularity of e-books. | B．The rising prices of physical books. |
| C．Most young people’s love for them. | D．The production of physical books. |
| A．Negative | B．Positive | C．Hateful | D．Doubtful |
| A．carry a book around with you | B．value the time reading in an armchair |
| C．make friends with a book | D．just read e-books to get information |
| A．Physical books are here to stay. | B．Electronic books are sure to die out. |
| C．People can learn more from e-books. | D．People can be friends with physical books. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Best Science Fictions
Dune Series by Frank Herbert
Frank Herbert’s Dune series is my white whale. I don’t know if I will ever be able to finish them all as they are long and dense, but I know I would be remiss (疏忽的) if I left them off this list, as they truly are legends. And a new Dune movie is coming—so be sure to read the original before the second screen adaptation lands in 2020.
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
Moving into more modern territory, each entry of N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy (三部曲) has won a Hugo Award when it was first published. It’s a science-fiction story married to fantasy elements that is one of the most famous pieces of literature. A must-read.
The Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey
This spectacular series consists of nine books. I know that looks like a lot of novels, but trust me, they are absolutely worth reading. The Expanse is easily one of the best sci-fi series in history, and now the TV adaptation has caused one of the best sci-fi shows in history. The first book starts in our solar system and expands beyond it with a growing cast of characters that will feel like family after a dive into this fantastic series.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
This is the only stand-alone (独立的) book on this list, as the rest are all in a series, so if you don’t feel like investing in 300,000 pages of content, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is for you. This book is the heir (继承人) to Neuromancer’s Cyberpunk throne and an absolutely excellent read from Stephenson. The author uses virtual reality as his setting, and the main character is a pizza deliveryman in one world and a warrior prince in another.
1. Whose novel will be adapted into a film?| A．Frank Herbert. | B．N. K. Jemisin. |
| C．James S. A. Corey. | D．Neal Stephenson. |
| A．Dune Series. | B．Snow Crash. |
| C．The Expanse Series. | D．The Broken Earth Trilogy. |
| A．It’s the longest story. | B．It’s about solar system. |
| C．It’s not a series. | D．It’s extremely fantastic. |
Everyone can benefit a lot from reading books. The following is about various benefits of reading books.
One of the primary benefits of reading books is its ability to develop your thinking skills.
These are just some of the wonderful benefits of reading books.
| A．You can improve your memory by reading. |
| B．Reading keeps your mind in good condition. |
| C．Reading books can make you become confident. |
| D．Reading books provides you with new knowledge. |
| E．Reading mystery novels, for example, trains your mind. |
| F．Following the steps from a cooking video will be difficult. |
| G．Why don’t you drop into a bookstore and pick a book up? |
In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS to fix this broken code. Using stories and case studies from his work with CEOs of Fortune 500 in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive ability at work.
Based on seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can
A must-read for everyone trying to stand out in a world of increasing workloads and stress, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to acquire the benefits of a happier and more positive mode of thinking to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.
1. Which of the following is the traditional code for success?
| A．Hard word→success→happiness. |
| B．Success→happiness→hard word. |
| C．Happiness→hard word→success. |
| D．Hard work→ happiness→success. |
| A．Conventional code for success is totally useless. |
| B．The more we are successful, the happier we are. |
| C．Positive psychology is really backward. |
| D．Happiness contributes greatly to success. |
| A．To reprogram one’s brain to be healthier. |
| B．To make people more positive and competitive. |
| C．To study stories and cases of CEOs. |
| D．To make a lecture at Harvard University. |
| A．provide fund for |
| B．make full use of |
| C．write big letters for |
| D．stand out in |
| A．To help people stand out in the world. |
| B．To arouse people’s sense of happiness. |
| C．To help people decrease the work stress. |
| D．To strongly recommend the book. |
【推荐1】“Hi, how are ya,” some people say when they see a familiar face. The words run together into a mass, all sense and meaning lost. All the same, people do care how you are. After they greet you, it’s likely you will greet them back, with an equally meaningless phrase like, “Can’t complain, can’t complain.” You could probably complain, at length, or share a brilliant thought you were just beginning when a greeting interrupted you. You don’t though, you say, “Great, you?”
You are not giving each other information about your health and well-being. All the same, you are sharing information. You’re acknowledging each other’s positions as acknowledged friends, or at least as accepted acquaintances. And you are reestablishing the ties that may have lapsed since yesterday.
It’s what anthropologist Bronislaw Malinoski called a phatic communication. Its message is not in the words you use, but in the fact that you speak ritually accepted words. In Asia, for example, people may ask one another if they have eaten, or if they are busy. They’re not really asking for their lunch menu or their agenda, they are saying hello. A phatic signal says hi.
There’s embarrassment of being near people without acknowledging them. That uncomfortable feeling is one reason why lonely passengers in the subway may behave as if they cannot see anyone around them or may escape their uncomfortable situation with a book. Some people read all the way home, and never turn a page.
Your friend isn’t asking how you are, and you aren’t telling him. However, he is recognizing your existence, and when you answer, you are recognizing his. In addition, the set speech you have shared opens the door to closer communications if both agree. Someday, you may come to real close friendship, and really tell one another how you are.
Meanwhile, people who greet one another this way do care. They care enough to recognize someone’s essential humanity. They send a signal across the space between, to share, very briefly and lightly, in awareness of one another.
Your greetings prove that neither of you has become a social outcast. How are you? You are still a member of society in good status. You are still the one who knows the rituals necessary to get to work each day.
1. When people greet, they ________.| A．want to show their different educational backgrounds |
| B．rarely show something related to the words themselves |
| C．want to know other people’s privacy |
| D．often complain about the bad weather |
| A．is rarely used by Asian people | B．is too complex to be used often |
| C．helps establish or keep certain relationships | D．often ruins the normal relationships between friends |
| A．they want to be polite to others | B．they feel uncomfortable to do it |
| C．they don’t know when to greet them | D．they want to do something meaningful |
| A．a person who is well-educated | B．a person who succeeds suddenly |
| C．a person who is a burden to society | D．a person who is not accepted by others |
| A．Greetings should be better expressed. |
| B．Greetings convey different meanings to different people. |
| C．Greetings help prove an individual’s social independence. |
| D．Greetings help an individual be connected with the society. |
【推荐2】How many phone numbers can you remember by heart? It’s probably fewer than you would like. Actually, you’re not alone. Out of more than 1,000 Americans who were surveyed, more than half said that they couldn’t recall the phone numbers of their friends and neighbors. And 44% said that they couldn’t remember their relatives’ phone numbers. In their eyes, there is no point in filling their heads with phone numbers if they’re all stored in smart phones that are with them almost all the time.
In fact, most people are suffering from a sort of digital amnesia. More than 90% of those surveyed agreed that they used the Internet as an online extension of their brains. Rote memorization was once an important part of modern education, but we just need a click or slide now. That’s making us worse at remembering things.
Researchers found that when people expected to have access to information online, they were less likely to remember actual facts，but more likely to remember how to find them. As a result, we are already becoming one with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found.
However, some believe it isn’t necessarily a bad thing—maybe it gives them more chances to think through things. We certainly have access to more knowledge now than ever, even if it isn’t all stored in our brains.
Even so, I still believe that there are more risks to this new world of memory beyond losing our ability to recall some information such as who the 15th President was. That kind of information may always be a click away, but the important things are personal ones, like the way your parents smiled at your wedding. It’s harder to recall or find online. If you’re relying on yourself to keep track of those memories, they will be much more meaningful.
1. Paragraph 1 is mainly used to________.| A．serve as the background | B．introduce the topic |
| C．explain new research | D．attract readers’ attention |
| A．Dealing with too many things. | B．Seldom thinking about questions. |
| C．Relying on the Internet too much. | D．The changes of their memories. |
| A．Over 90% people are suffering from digital amnesia. |
| B．Rote memorization no longer exists in modern life. |
| C．People can gain knowledge more easily than before. |
| D．People find it hard to remember how to find information |
| A．Worried. | B．Optimistic. | C．Disappointed. | D．Confident. |
【推荐3】When Eugenie George, a financial writer and educator from Philadelphia, first heard that her friend passed a financial counseling exam, her heart sank. She’d failed the same test weeks earlier. But then, instead of sadness, she called her friend, “I congratulated her and told her she inspired me.” George knew that being frank would remove her envy, but she was surprised when it shifted her attitude so she could share her friend’s happiness and experience her own, in turn.
Finding pleasure in another person’s good fortune is what social scientists call freudenfreude, which describes the delight we feel when someone else succeeds, even if it doesn’t directly involve us. Freudenfreude is like social glue, says Catherine Chambliss, a professor of psychology at Ursinus College. It makes relationships “more close and enjoyable.”
While the benefits of freudenfreude are plentiful, it doesn’t always come easily. In zero-sum situations, your loss might really sting (刺痛), making freudenfreude feel out of reach. If you were raised in a family that paired winning with self-worth, Chambliss says, you might misread someone else’s victory as your own shortcoming.
To help people strengthen joy-sharing, Chambliss and her colleagues developed a program called Freudenfreude Enhancement Training, featuring two exercises.
Show active interest in someone else’s happiness. To start, invite the bearer of good news to discuss the experience. Even if your heart isn’t in it, happiness can thrive when you make a heartfelt effort to engage with a positive activity. So when you speak with your friend, make eye contact and listen attentively. This should motivate you to keep going and make you feel as if your efforts will pay off with freudenfreude.
View individual success as a joint effort. “When we feel happy for others, their joy becomes our joy,” says psychologist Marisa Franco, author of the book Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Makeand KeepFriends. To that end, freudenfreude encourages us to look at success as a community achievement. “No one gets to the top alone, and when we elevate others, we’re often carried up with them,” she says.
1. Why does the author mention the example of Eugenie George in paragraph1?| A．To explain a role. | B．To introduce a concept. |
| C．To provide a background. | D．To make a prediction. |
| A．Li Ping feels sorry for his friend’s not having passed a test. |
| B．Li Hua feels happy that his father has given him a birthday present. |
| C．Lin Tao feels delighted for his deskmate’s having won the first award. |
| D．Liu Bin secretly feels glad that his classmate Li Li has lost her beloved bike. |
| A．The ways to achieve freudenfreude. |
| B．The reasons to experience freudenfreude. |
| C．The aims of carrying out two exercises. |
| D．The influences of performing two exercises. |
| A．Knowing others’ victories results in your envy. |
| B．Learning to share with others enhances your delight. |
| C．Celebrating others’ victories brings yourself benefits. |
| D．Witnessing others’ misfortune makes yourself unhappy. |
【推荐1】When a friend comes to you after a stressful day, how do you comfort him? Do you let him complain? Do you pour him a glass of coffee? Those could work. But a new study finds that a very effective technique is also simple and easy—hugging.
“Individuals who reported noticing the availability of a network of supportive individuals tend to show better adaptation when faced with stress. But just because you have a support network does not mean that you absolutely feel that support,” said Michael Murphy, a psychology expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He wanted to know if people who received hugs regularly could handle anxiety and stress better.
So Murphy and his team interviewed 404 men and women every evening for two weeks. During these interviews, the participants were asked a simple yes or no question—whether somebody had hugged them that day—and a simple yes or no question of whether they had experienced conflict with somebody that day. They also were asked to respond to questions about negative and positive mood states.
And the researchers found that people who experienced a conflict were not as negatively affected if they received a hug that day as participants who experienced conflict and didn’t get a hug. And they were also found not to carry the negative effect to the next day, while those who did not receive one would. The findings are in PLOS ONE.
Murphy does include this warning: “So our findings should not be taken as evidence that people should just start hugging anyone and everyone who seems upset. A hug from one boss at work or a stranger on the street could be viewed as neither agreeable nor positive.”
1. Why does the writer write the first paragraph?| A．To introduce the topic of the text. | B．To tell the background information. |
| C．To show the importance of a hug. | D．To make a summary of the text. |
| A．find out causes of their conflicts | B．ask for advice on relieving stress |
| C．test the influence of hugging | D．seek ways to comfort troubled people |
| A．People not receiving a hug are affected less negatively than those with a hug. |
| B．People receiving a hug will get better immediately from the conflict. |
| C．People not receiving a hug stop being affected by the conflict the next day. |
| D．People receiving a hug are less affected by the conflict than those with no hug. |
| A．The interview results prove their findings. |
| B．There are some limitations of their findings. |
| C．People should hug others regularly and actively. |
| D．A boss should comfort workers by hugging. |
【推荐2】Humpback whales
Humpback whales are sometimes called performers of the ocean. This is because they can make impressive movements when they dive. The name “humpback”, which is the common name for this whale, refers to the typical curve shape the whale’s back forms as it dives.
Sometimes the humpback will dive with a fantastic movement, known as a breach. During breaching the whale uses its powerful tail flukes to lift nearly two-thirds of its body out of the water in a giant leap. A breach might also include a sideways twist with fins stretched out like wings, as the whale reaches the height of the breach.
A humpback whale breathes air at the surface of the water through two blowholes which are located near the top of the head. It blows a double stream of water that can rise up to 4 meters above the water.
The humpback has a small dorsal fin located towards the tail flukes about two-thirds of the way down its back. Other distinguishing features include large pectoral fins, which may be up to a third of the body length, and unique black, and white spots on the underside of the tail flukes. These markings are like fingerprints: no two are the same.
Humpback whales live in large groups. They communicate with each other through complex “songs”.
Quick FactsSize:
14m~18m in length
30~50 tons in weight
Living environment:
Open ocean and shallow coastline waters
Migration:
From warm tropical (热带的) waters, where they breed, to cold polar waters, where they eat.
Diet:
Shellfish, plants and fish of small size
Hunting:
Sometimes in groups, in which several whales form a circle under the water, blowing bubbles that form a “net” around a school of fish. The fish are then forced up to the surface in a concentrated mass.
Current state:
Endangered: it is estimated that there are about 5000~7000 humpback whales worldwide.
1. According to Quick Facts, a humpback whale ______.
| A．cannot survive in waters near the shore |
| B．doesn’t live in the same waters all the time |
| C．lives mainly on underwater plants |
| D．prefers to work alone when hunting food |
| A．use its tail flukes to leap out of the water |
| B．twist its body sideways to jump high. |
| C．blow two streams of water |
| D．communicate with a group of humpbacks. |
| A．has its unique markings on it tail flukes |
| B．has black and white fingerprints |
| C．gets its name from the way it hunts |
| D．is a great performer due to its songs |
【推荐3】The Notre Dame fire has been put out, but its spire and a large portion of its wooden roof have been damaged. The terrible destruction causes a sudden sharp pain to people around the world. On Chinese social media network Wechat a common comment on the disaster is: “What a pity that we cannot see the damaged parts of the wonder anymore.”
But the good news is that there is at least one way of seeing them, namely via a video game called Assassin's Creed: Unity. In this game, the player can travel to one city after another and enter the buildings exactly like what they are in reality, and see Notre Dame as it was before the fire. Further, with virtual reality technology(虚拟现实技术), which is already quite mature, one can even look around the undamaged Notre Dame as if it is still there. Maybe digital technology could help to better protect architectural cultural heritage.
The idea of digitizing ancient buildings, making digital models of them so their data can be saved, dates back to the 1990s and the necessary technology has continued to advance since then. By scanning the ancient buildings with lasers, building 3D models with multiple images, as well as measuring everything precisely, engineers can make a copy as accurate as the real one.
As computers and smartphones are hugely popular, the digital replica（复制品）has great use value. First, it allows tourists to feel the cultural relics without touching them, which helps protect them. The virtual tour of Dunhuang Grottoes（敦煌洞穴）in Gansu Province is a good example of this as tourists can view the paintings without standing near them. Furthermore, it can make the digitized cultural relics more famous by spreading awareness about them via the Internet. In 2000, a virtual tour of the Great Wall became very popular at the Hannover World Expo, which increased the number of foreign tourists visiting the site in the following years. Above all, it preserves all the information of the cultural relics. Even if the original ones are damaged one day, people can still know what they were like and can build a replica if desired.
Of course, however precise a model is, it is not the original. Time is the biggest threat to a country's architectural heritage, which will always become ruins with the passing of time. Maybe we will have better technologies in the future, but the digital technology offers a practical way to preserve architectural cultural heritage at the moment.
1. What can we see about Notre Dame in the game?| A．The damaged parts. | B．Its wooden shape. |
| C．Its original look. | D．The big fire. |
| A．It keeps the relics safe. | B．It helps to guard the relics. |
| C．It gathers data of the relics. | D．It advertises the history of the relics. |
| A．By comparison. | B．By giving examples. |
| C．By classification （分类） | D．By listing data. |
| A．Doubtful. | B．Delighted. | C．Supportive. | D．Conservative. （保守的） |
