【推荐1】Ask an adult, “What do teenagers do in their free time?” A large number of adults’ answers will probably include playing video games, watching movies and TV, and hanging out (闲逛) with friends.     1    

Most of these answers are wrong. Fewer teenagers watch TV or go to the movies these days. They even hang out with friends less often than before.    2     They read all the time. As a matter of fact, they read more often than their parents. They aren’t just reading books. Instead, many teenagers read e-mails and messages. They read articles on websites and posts on social media. They get a lot of reading practice every day.

Parents worry that it’s not the right kind of reading practice, though.     3     Actually, any kind of reading is good for teenagers, helping them develop skills that they will need in their later life. Their memories will become stronger, and their vocabularies will become wider.

Online, they can search for many different things to read.    4     However, books are still better. They are easier to focus on. Teenagers understand and remember more from them. Also, reading books helps teenagers to stay away from social media. Using social media too much causes stress and depression.

    5     First, they should make books available around the house. Then, they should read to their kids as often as possible or give them time to read. Finally, they can form good reading habits by reading books. Kids copy the habits that they see.

【推荐3】Nearly all “speed reading ” courses have a “pacing” element-some timing device which lets the student know how many words a minute he is reading. You can do this simply by looking at your watch every 5 or 10 minutes and noting down the page number you have reached. Check the average number of words per page for the particular book you are reading.How do you know when 5 minutes has passed on your watch if you are busy reading the book?Well, this is difficult at first. A friend can help by timing you over a set period, or you can read within hearing distance of a public clock which strikes the quarter hours. Pace yourself every three or four days, always with the same kind of easy, general interest books.You should soon notice your accustomed w. p. m, rate creeping up.

Obviously there is little point in increasing your w p. m rate if you do not understand what you are reading. When you are consciously trying to increase your reading speed, stop after every chapter( if you are reading a novel) or every section or group of ten or twelve pages( if it is a text-book) and ask yourself a few questions about what you have been reading. If you find you have lost the thread of the story or you cannot remember clearly the details of what was said, reread the section or chapter.

You can also try “lightning speed” exercise from time to time. Take four or five pages of the general interest book you happen to be reading and read them as fast as you possibly can. Do not bother about whether you understand or not. Now go back and read them at what you feel to be your “normal” w p. m. rate, the rate at which you can comfortably understand. After a “lightning speed” reading through(probably 600 w. p. m) you will usually find that your “normal” speed has increased-perhaps. by as much as 50-100 w. p.m. This is the technique sportsmen use when they usually run further in training than they will have to on the day of the big race.

【推荐1】Here we are, wrapping up 2023 in a red bow like one of the holiday presents in a TV commercial. It was a year full of poetic discoveries for our editorial team and especially for me. I encountered so many new-to-me poets. Diana Solís from the December 2022 issue and Joyce Mansour from the June 2023 issue are examples of this: poets with whom I was unfamiliar and who have now become part of my daily conversation. Living in Chicago, I might have encountered Diana Solís some other way. She is an icon of revolutionary poetry and photography. What a gift to learn, to be enthusiastic about new poetics like I’m still in the front row of the classroom, trying to do my best.

Two truths I’ve learned about Chicago since moving here: Chicago is a city that holds things close and doesn’t need to show off about its riches. And there are riches everywhere —great music all over the place, the best pizza, an embarrassment of architectures, and, of course, poetry on every corner. Nelson Algren said every great writer must spend time in Chicago.

The final version of 2023 is from a distinguished Chicagoan, the poet and journalist Frank Marshall Davis. When I read his work for the first time, I was struck by the truth of the poems, his clear-eyed critique(批评). He was a truth teller when no one wanted to listen. This issue also includes poems of another Chicago great, Li-Young Lee. His poems taught me how to think about romance as an engine for a poem. Multiple generations of poets have been using the man’s gestures in their love poems, often without realizing it, because even their teachers were borrowing from Li-Young Lee too.

So maybe that is why this issue has me in my holiday feels. Poems can be for the poet and the community concurrently, an offering of the self that indicates the care of the giver.