【推荐1】Today is a perfect day that can leave you with good memories you may someday share with your friends. Here’s how:

    1     You can see or do something a million times, but you can only see or do it for the first time once. As a result, first time experiences usually leave a deep mark in our minds for the rest of our lives. So try to experience something different and you’ll have more memories!

Work on something that’s great to you.     2     Life is short. Today is the day to take action.

Smile and notice what’s right. Everything that happens in life is neither good nor bad.     3     And no matter how it turns out, it always ends up just the way it should. Either you succeed or you learn something.

Be true to yourself. The only shoes you can wear are your own. If you aren’t being yourself, you aren’t truly living.     4    

Make a new friend. People are interesting creatures (生物), and no two people are exactly alike.     5     Find out what makes them different. They’ll likely open your eyes to wonderful ideas. And you never know, they just might change your life.

Be present. Be here now. Remember, right now is the only dear moment to you.   Right now is life. Don’t miss it.

【推荐3】A gratitude journal is a great way to keep yourself in a positive state of mind.This article will offer some tips for starting and keeping one.

Make it a rule to write down things you are thankful for per day    1    This will make writing the journal more challenging as time goes on, but that's how your awareness and thankfulness will grow. You'll find new things to be thankful for that you hardly noticed before.

Write about extended material things in your life.     2    For example,if you love to paint, you maybe grateful for the paints that you have.Or,if you like music,you may be grateful for your CD collections.

    3    You can start by feeling grateful to be alive.Avoid the trap of being grateful for something that is better than what others have.Instead,compare whatever you are grateful for with how you would feel if you didn't have it.

Think about your abilities.You may start with basic abilities,like your ability to see and hear.     4    Think about skillful things like dancing and singing,and your character like your skills in cheering up people or your skills in being a good friend.

Consider the people in your life.Think about all the people you are grateful to and write down the reasons.It's also good to write about the people that you don't really like and find a reason to appreciate them.    5    After all,there is good in everyone.

【推荐2】British Writer John Donne once said：“No man is an island；every book is a world.”As an enthusiastic reader，I can’t agree with the latter part of the sentence more．Every summer．I endeavor to find some peaceful places where I can attack some classics without being disturbed．Thomas Hardy wants to live far from the madding crowd．I am no friend to chaos，either．

I read George Orwell’s 1984 in a New England beachside cottage with no locks on the doors，no telephones or televisions in the rooms．1984 is a good book that needs deep reflection．Attempting Sound and Fury lying on the bed of a poorly-occupied motel，however， was less fruitful：I made it through one and a quarter volumes，but then my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn’t keep them open．

But this summer I find myself at a loss．I’m not quite interested in J．D．Salinger，say，or Frankenstein．There’s always War and Peace．which I’ve covered some distance several times，only to get bogged down in the“War”part，set it aside for a while，and realize that I have to start over from the beginning again，having forgotten everyone’s name and social rank．How appealing to simply fall back on a favorite—once more into The Call of the Wild or Alice in the Wonderland，which feels almost like cheating，too exciting and too much fun to belong to serious literature．

And then there’s John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath．This title do not amaze but   confuse. We’re never short of sour grapes，but we’ve never heard of angry grapes．Anyway grapes are my favorite fruit of summer．These stone fruits can always make me feel cheerful and peaceful all at once．

【推荐3】When I was in the eighth grade, one caring teacher of mine taught me several useful little techniques. He told me to keep a notebook nearby when I was reading and that I should try to figure out what the main idea of every paragraph was so that I could understand the passages better. It seemed awfully boring at that time, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

It didn’t take long before I started reading a book called How to Read a Book that would completely change how I thought about the written word. Thanks to these techniques, I learned to get the most out of reading. I kept applying them over the years until I finally came up with a lot of little techniques for reading a book.

I also eventually came to learn that there were a lot of different kinds of reading. For example, when I read a Stephen King novel, the interesting plot made me completely relaxed. Then there’s reading to learn new things, which is what I do when I read personal finance books. There’s also reading to understand and grow, which is easily the hardest and the most rewarding. The last kind of reading involves taking a piece of literature or a nonfiction book that you might read for simple pleasure and transforming it into something life-changing, or something that causes you to question some of your deeply-held ideas and beliefs.

How to Read a Book really focuses on the latter two: books that you read to learn about a new topic or to learn a skill, and books that you read to learn about yourself. If you’ve ever been drawn to read to really improve yourself, this book is well worth the time to read even if it’s a bit dry at times. Let’s dig in.