【推荐2】Want to be more successful? If so, then you need to read a few self-help books. Here are four popular ones to get you going.

59 Seconds ( 2009) by Richard Wiseman

This is a self-help book with a difference. Wiseman, a scientist, uses science to prove many self-help myths(神话) are false. For example, self-help books say that if you want to achieve a goal, you should visualize it. But Wiseman says that's the worst thing to do. Studies show that you need to visualize the steps required to achieve the goal.

How to Win Friends& Influence People ( 1936) —by Dale Carnegie

This is the book that launched the self-help type. Carnegie says financial success is 15% professional knowledge and 85% the ability to express ideas, assume leadership, and motivate people. The book is full of practical advice on how to influence people by making them like you.

The Millionaire Next Door (1996) by Thomas Stanley & Wlliam Danko

The authors of this book spent years interviewing American millionaires to figure out the secrets of their success. And they discovered that a majority of millionaires don't live luxury lifestyles. They're rich because they live below their means and reinvest what they earn.

Who Moved My Cheese? (1998)-by Spencer Johnson

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life, published on September 8, 1998, is a motivational business fable. The text describes change in one's work and life, and four typical reactions to those changes by two mice and two “little people”，during their hunt for cheese.

1. What is the key to achieving success in 59 Seconds?

A．To employ science.	B．To follow examples.
C．To picture procedures.	D．To visualize the goal.

2. What is Dale Carnegie's book mainly about?

A．How to master occupational knowledge.	B．How to apply practical techniques.
C．How to gain strong management.	D．How to become popular persons.

3. Which book can help you adapt to change in your life?

A．59 Seconds	B．Who Moved My Cheese?
C．The Millionaire Next Door	D．How to Win Friends& Influence People

【推荐3】A man may usually be known by the books he reads es well as by the company he keeps.     1    

A good book may be among the best of friends. It is the same today that it always was, and it will never change.    2     It does not turn its back upon us in need. It always receives us with the same kindness, amusing and instructing us in youth, and comforting us in age.

People often discover their common characteristics by the mutual love for a book. As an old proverb goes, “Love me, love my book.”    3     People can think, feel, and sympathize with each other through their favorite author.

Books are by far the most lasting products of human efforts. Temples and statues may fall into ruin, but books will survive.    4     They are fresh forever. The only effect of time is to reject the bad products, for nothing in literature can long survive but what is really good.

    5     They bring us into the presence of the greatest minds that have ever lived. We hear what they said and did; we see them as if they were really alive. We sympathize with them, enjoy with them, sorrow with them, Their experience becomes ours, and we feel as if we were in the scenes which they describe.

The book is a living voice. It is an intellect to which one still listens.

A．Their spirits walk among us.

B．Books introduce us into the best society.

C．Great thoughts will never fade over time.

D．It is the most patient and cheerful companion.

E．The book is a truer and higher bond of relationships.

F．The world of a man’s life is the world of his thoughts.

G．One should always live in the company of best books and best men.

【推荐1】A good modern newspaper is an extraordinary piece of reading. It is remarkable first for what it contains: the range of news from local crime to international politics, from sport to business to fashion to science, and the range of comment and special features as well, from editorial page to feature articles and interviews to criticism of books, art, theatre and music.
A newspaper is even more remarkable for the way one reads it: never completely, never straight through, but always by jumping from here to there, in and out glancing at one piece, reading another article all the way through, reading just a few paragraghs of the next. A good modern newspaper offers a variety to attract many different readers, but far from one reader is interested in what brings this variety together in. One place is its topicality(时事性), its immediate relation to what is happening in your world and your locality now. But immediacy and the speed of production that goes with it mean also that much of what appears in a newspaper has no more than transient(短暂的) value. For all these reasons, no two people really read the same paper: what each person does is to put together out of the pages of that day’s paper, his own selection and sequence, his own newspaper. For all these reasons, reading newspapers efficiently, which means getting what you want from them without missing things you need but without wasting time, demands skill and self-awareness as you modify and apply the techniques of reading.
1. A modern newspaper is remarkable for all the following EXCEPT its ______.

A．wide coverage	B．uniform style
C．speed in reporting news	D．popularity

2. According to the passage, the reason why no two people really read the same newspaper is that ______.

A．people scan for the news they are interested in

B．different people prefer different newspapers

C．people are not interested in the same kind of news

D．people have different views about what a good newspaper is

3. It can be concluded from the passage that newspaper readers ______.

A．apply reading techniques skillfully

B．jump from one newspaper to another

C．appreciate the variety of a newspaper

D．usually read a newspaper selectively

4. A good newspaper offers “a variety” to readers because ______.

A．it tries to serve different readers

B．it has to cover things that happen in a certain locality

C．readers are difficult to please

D．readers like read different newspapers

【推荐2】Before the 1830s,most newspapers were sold through annual subscriptions in America, usually $8 to $10 a year. Today $8 or $10 seems a small amount of money, but at that time these amounts were forbidding to most citizens. Accordingly, newspapers were read almost only by rich people in politics or the trades. In addition, most newspapers had little in them that would appeal to a mass audience. They were dull and visually forbidding. But the revolution that was taking place in the 1830s would change all that.

The trend, then, was toward the "penny paper"— a term referring to papers made widely available to the public. It meant any inexpensive newspaper; perhaps more importantly it meant newspapers that could be bought in single copies on the street.

This development did not take place overnight. It had been possible(but not easy)to buy single copies of newspapers before 1830,but this usually meant the reader had to go down to the printer's office to purchase a copy. Street sales were almost unknown. However, within a few years, street sales of newspapers would be commonplace in eastern cities. At first the price of single copies was seldom a penny—usually two or three cents was charged —and some of the older well-known papers charged five or six cents. But the phrase "penny paper " caught the public's fancy, and soon there would be papers that did indeed sell for only a penny.

1. What did street sales mean to newspapers?

A．They would be priced higher.	B．They would disappear from cities.
C．They could have more readers.	D．They could regain public trust.

2. Who were the newspapers of the new trend targeted at?

A．Local politicians.	B．Common people.
C．Young publishers.	D．Rich businessmen.

【推荐3】It’s never easy to admit the mistakes you make, but doing so is an important step toward moving forward.

National Geographic magazine recently published an article with the title “For decades, our coverage was racist. To rise above our past, we must acknowledge it.” It was written by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg, the first woman and first Jewish person to hold the position. National Geographic has acknowledged that its coverage of the black and racial minorities in America and the wider world has been historically racist, frequently promoting caricatures of the “noble savage” and barely featuring the US’s minority population.

According to Goldberg, the 130-year-old publication’s April issue “explores how race defines, separates, and unites us”. In honor of 50 years since the killing of Martin Luther King, who is known for fighting racial inequality in the US, the issue is devoted to race.

The publication republished a number of examples of historical racism in its coverage. One 1916 article about Australia included a photo of two Indigenous Australians with the wording: “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.”

To review its previous coverage of race, Goldberg asked University of Virginia historian John Edwin Mason to look back at the magazine’s text, choice of subjects, and photography of people of color from the US and abroad. “Until the 1970s, National Geographic all but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborer or domestic workers,” Goldberg wrote about Mason’s findings. “Meanwhile, it pictured ‘natives’ elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed happy hunters, noble savages.”

Mason also found that the magazine often ran photos of “uncivilized” natives amazed by “civilized” Western technology.

In recent years, however, the magazine has improved. For example, in a 2015 project, National Geographic gave cameras to young people in the Caribbean country of Haiti and asked them to shoot pictures of their everyday lives.

“The coverage wasn’t right before, because it was told from a white American point of view, and I think it speaks to exactly why we needed a variety of storytellers,” Goldberg told the Associated Press.

National Geographic’s look at its past also inspired other media organizations to revisit their own historical coverage of race. The New York Times admitted that most of its obituaries(讣告) were about the lives of white men, and has started publishing obituaries of famous women in a special section titled “Overlooked”. After all, recognizing overlooked mistakes is what makes us grow.

1. The April issue of National Geographic magazine is special because ______.

A．readers can see Mason’s investigation report in this issue

B．it is released to mark National Geographic’s 130th anniversary

C．it focuses on the issue of race in memory of Martin Luther King

D．it is the first issue since Susan Goldberg became the editor-in-chief

2. Which of the following may prove National Geographic’s coverage was racist?

A．It often pictured coloured people with decent jobs.

B．Natives were often presented as undressed happy hunters.

C．It asked ordinary people to shoot pictures of their daily lives.

D．It only featured minority groups in America but overlooked others.

3. What can we learn about the National Geographic?

A．It used to tell stories from the perspective of a white Jewish woman.

B．The overall image of natives in it was brave, intelligent but uncivilized.

C．Its texts and choice of subjects were diverse and had no racial prejudice.

D．It inspired other media organizations to reflect on their coverage of race.

4. According to the writer, acknowledging the mistakes may         .

A．spoil the image of the world famous magazine

B．remove racial discrimination around the world

C．help the magazine to move forward and grow better

D．discourage the editors from reporting bravely and honestly

【推荐3】As a historian who's always searching for the text or the image that makes us re-evaluate the past, I've become preoccupied with looking for photographs that show our Victorian ancestors smiling (what better way to shatter the image of 19th-century prudery?). I've found quite a few, and - since I started posting them on Twitter — they have been causing quite a stir. People have been surprised to see evidence that Victorians had fun and could, and did, laugh. They are noting that the Victorians suddenly seem to become more human as the hundred-or-so years that separate us fade away through our common experience of laughter.

Of course, I need to concede that my collection of ‘Smiling Victorians’ makes up only a tiny percentage of the vast catalogue of photographic portraiture created between 1840 and 1900, the majority of which show sitters posing miserably and stiffly in front of painted backdrops, or staring absently into the middle distance. How do we explain this trend?

During the 1840s and 1850s, in the early days of photography, exposure times were notoriously long: the daguerreotype photographic method (producing an image on a silvered copper plate) could take several minutes to complete,resulting in blurred images as sitters shifted position or adjusted their limbs. The thought of holding a fixed grin as the camera performed its magical duties was too much to contemplate, and so a non-committal blank stare became the norm.

But exposure times were much quicker by the 1 880s, and the introduction of the Box Brownie and other portable cameras meant that, though slow by today's digital standards, the exposure was almost instantaneous. Spontaneous smiles were relatively easy to capture by the 1890s, so we must look elsewhere for an explanation of why Victorians still hesitated to smile.

One explanation might be the loss of dignity displayed through a cheesy grin. “Nature gave us lips to conceal our teeth.” ran one popular Victorian maxim, mentioning the fact that before the birth of proper dentistry mouths were often in a shocking state of hygiene. A flashing set of healthy and clean, regular “pearly whites” was a rare sight in Victorian society, the preserve of the super- rich (and even then, dental hygiene was not guaranteed).

A toothy grin (especially when there were gaps or blackened gnashers) lacked class: drunks, tramps and music hall performers might gurn and grin with a smile as wide as Lewis Carroll's gum-exposing Cheshire Cat, but it was not a becoming look for properly bred persons. Even Mark Twain,a man who enjoyed a hearty laugh, said that when it came to photographic portraits there could be “nothing more damning than a silly, foolish smile fixed forever”.

1. According to paragraph 1, the author's posts on Twitter ________.

A．illustrated the development of Victorian photography.

B．highlighted social media's tole in Victorian researches.

C．re-evaluated the Victorian's notion of public image.

D．transformed people's initial cognition of the Victorians.

2. What can we imply from the whole passage?

A．The Victorian portraits show effects of era-gulfs and mirror the social conventions

B．By the 1850s,a fixed grin had naturally been mainstreamed by most individuals

C．In the 1890s,Victorian’s unfit dental condition might have driven them from smiling in the photos.

D．Faced the option to smile,most Victorians held liberal perspectives and showing partiality in treating clinics.

3. Which of the following questions does the text answer?

A．When did the Victorians start to view photograph differently?

B．How come most Victorians looked stem and stiff in photographs?

C．How can re-assessing pasts reveal the contemporary tendency?

D．How did smiling in photograph become a post-Victorian norm?