【推荐1】When I saw Pamela tonight, she smiled and I smiled back to her. She was looking more _____ than before.

Pamela _____ at the express checkouts (快速结账台) in a busy supermarket. She helps when the selfserve checkout comes across a (n) _____ like no price on products. Usually she has hardly _____ one before another is created.

When I shopped there, _____ there weren’t any problems with the checkout, I called Pamela to the checkout I was _____. My concern was about Pamela. She looked _____ and was under great stress as she _____ moved from one checkout to the next.

I told Pamela that she needed to _____ I told her that it was ______ for her to put herself under such pressure and that we could wait. I ______ her that our expectations as ______ weren’t as severe as the ones she had set for herself. Pamela said she felt ______ because I not only ______ her stress but also talked to her about it. I gently told her things had to ______ I told her I’d be looking out for her in future to see if she’d take my ______.

Well, Pamela has taken it. Tonight, she was still doing her job but there was a ______ . She looked cool and calm. She told me that she shared what I said with her ______ As I walked away from Pamela, I was ______ of myself. Not only have I caused Pamela to think about her stress but also she has ______ her coworkers to do so.

【推荐2】When faced with difficult situations in their lives，many people find them too _______ and give up，especially on their life dreams.But not for Gabriel Heredia.

Gabriel is a 20-year-old Argentinian barber who was born without hands._______ his physical disability，he was able to grow up happy and _______.He also always had the support of friends and family，never feeling _______ treated at all by his schoolmates. At the age of 14，he _______ working as a barber，and learned all the techniques to perfect haircuts. Although he first saw it as a hobby，Gabriel quickly _______ that this was the profession he wanted to work in.

His family _______ him to open his first barbershop，which he worked at for one and a half years. There，he _______ the president of Argentina Corta，an organization for barbers to connect，do charity work in less fortunate _______，and teach hairdressing to those who are __________. Gabriel is now part of Argentina Corta，offering his services to people of all __________ so they can build up the __________ they need to get decent jobs.

As a bright and caring young man，Gabriel __________ not only to be a barber，but also to make a __________ with the neighborhood:“The thing that I like most of my __________ is that people feel comfortable and stylish with my cuts and that makes me __________.”

Nowadays，Gabriel runs his own barber shop in Buenos Aires，where people __________ around the block for his services. Gabriel’s __________ shows that the barriers we face in life are never __________to deal with successfully. Whatever problem you face，you can __________ tackle it by adopting the right mindset，and never giving up.

【推荐3】As my husband, Doug, stood on the busy New York city street to stop a taxi, I tried to protect my daughter from the cold December wind and rain. I put my head down to kiss her______face.

Frustrated and wet, my husband gave up his attempt to hail a taxi. I knew the feeling. Just after her first birthday, we were told our daughter Katie has a ________ brain illness. Since that moment, Doug and I felt like _______ in a marathon race where the finish line kept disappearing. We knew Katie was running out of ________. It had taken months before we finally had a name for the ________, but we were told only a few specialists in the world knew how to ________ it. Now, as we finally found a brilliant doctor to ________ our girl, we were in a strange city in the cold rain.

Just at the moment, a middle-aged woman _______ and said, “Pardon me? May I offer you a(n) _______?

Before we could say ________, she continued, “It’s really no ________ for me. Just get in.”

It was then that I noticed her thick Irish ________, which ________ me up like hot soup. We ________ said, “Thanks! Roosevelt Hospital, please,” as we got in her car for the ride.

“Are you going for the baby?” she asked us.

I nodded my head, holding back my _______.

At the hospital, we _______ her a dozen times for the ride. As the woman hugged me, I noticed her face was ________ with tears. She promised to pray for us before she left.

After three more visits to New York and two more _______ surgeries (手术), Katie is cured. But the voice of the Irish Angel still rang as a constant________ of a tiny ray of light that appeared in our ______ days.

【推荐1】It did take me quite a while to start noticing Dr. Yuval Noah Harari’s well-received book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (人类简史). I bought the book after I heard Dou Wentao (a renowned TV host) mention it on his podcast, and to be frank, I read the first chapter with little _________. But it turned out to be the best book I read in 2017.

While I was immediately ___________ the book kept evolving as I read it. The book began with a brief introduction of the lives and activities of the earliest proto-humans (原始人)---Neanderthals (尼安德特人), Homoerectus (直立人) and early Homo Sapiens (智人)---and then _________ an examination of why it was the Homo sapiens, after hundreds of thousands of years of surviving but pretty much existing in the middle of the food chain, _________ rocketed to the top of it without any significant genetic changes, conquered multiple climates, and eventually domesticated the world around them from farm animals to crops. And Harari includes an interesting but fairly _________ argument about the true nature of our relationship to our most necessary crop---wheat.

Think for a moment about the _________ Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. All of a sudden, within just a few short millennia, it was growing everywhere.

So how did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous (到处存在的)? Wheat did it by manipulating (操纵) Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life _________ and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to _________ more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Then, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk _________ taking care of wheat plants.

However, the body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for cultivating wheat. Therefore human spines, knees, necks and arches paid the price. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle __________ next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not __________ wheat. It’s the other way around. One of the most important and sustained ideas running through the book is that what ultimately __________ Homo sapiens from all other creatures---other mammals, other apes, and even other “humans” like Neanderthals---was not our opposable thumbs or some other __________ standards, but instead it was our ability to generate (生成), believe in and act upon what Yuval Noah Narari calls “myths” or “__________” (essentially ideas and cultural institutions), particularly on a large scale and collective basis, which eventually transformed us from creatures that lived in small, loosely-organized groups (the typical feature of most apes) to our modern status.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a fascinating ambitious and difficult-to-summarize book that is also just highly __________. So as senior high school students, you won’t experience too much difficulty following the author’s train of thoughts. And I strongly recommend you to indulge (纵情于) yourself in this well-written book.

Inspired by Yuval Noah Harari’s mind-blowing book:

Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind

【推荐2】A special delight for many book lovers is to open a cover to find a map secreted inside. It is filled with the details of land about to be ______. A writer’s map hints at a fully imagined world. At the beginning of a book, it’s a promise of what is to come. In the middle, it’s a guide through the fictional environment. And at the end, a map is a ______ of all the places the ______ has taken you to.

A new book, The Writer’s Map, contains dozens of ______ maps. Some were drawn by ______, while others were made by artists to ______ places that writers have ______ in their stories. “All maps are products of human ______,” say Huw Lewis-Jones, the book’s editor. “For some writers, making a map is absolutely ______ to shaping and telling their tale.”

The book features essays by authors and mapmakers, many of whom ______ Treasure Island, a novel about a magical treasure hunting ______ on the high seas. It contains one of the most well-known ______ in literature. The author first sketched the map in 1881 for his stepson. A red X ______ the place where the treasure was ______.

The ______ of Treasure Island inspired other writers to ______ maps in their own stories. This is an experience ______ shared by map-loving writers. For some writers, map making is a ______ way to pull themselves into their own work. “I always ______ my way into stories,” writes Abi Elphinstone, author of the Dreamsnatcher books. “I begin every story by drawing a map because it is only when my ______ start moving from place to place that a plot unfolds.”