There are a lot of things to do with old books that you no longer want, depending on their condition. You might choose to sell them to a bookstore, pass them on to friends, or simply throw them out if they are in poor shape.

When you decide to deal with old books, check their condition first. If it is an old book with a torn cover and pages, sell it to the recycle bin. If the book is a hardcover (精装书) and the cover is still in good shape, sell it to a used bookstore or donate (捐赠) it to a charity.

When selling old books to a bookstore, you should know that book buyers are often looking for something special. It is important to know the content of old books if you are taking them to a bookstore. Fiction is usually good, but travel guides are not. If you want to donate old books to a charity, avoid donating books that are in truly poor condition. If a book is dirty or missing the cover, the charity cannot sell it or give it out. Most charities also prefer that you enter the charity with your donation.

You may also want to consider exchanging books with friends. You just need to place a shelf of old books that you don’t want by the door, and encourage your friends to take books that look interesting. If your entire social network follows this practice, a mobile library of old books can be formed. You can also have a book swap party, where everyone brings a box of old books for other people to look through. After the book swap, box up the rest of the books and donate them to a charity.

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3 . It might be _______ to choose what everyone has done, especially if it seemed to work for them. But is that what truly _______ for you?

On a recent hiking _______, my partner and I decided to take a popular trail in the _______direction. This was an old, well-traveled trail that people had been hiking and biking from A to Z for years. For our own reasons, we chose to travel from Z to A. Going backwards made more sense with my _______. The trip would take several days and going backwards _______ that I would end the trip closer to the airport for my flight home.

As my partner and I walked, everyone crossing our path had something to say, “You're going the wrong way. Are you lost? Are you returning _______ you forgot something? Are you crazy? The path occasionally crossed a _______. When it did, even passing cars beeped to _______ us in the “right” direction.

Why did people only see one way? Because that's what everyone does? Because that's how it's always been done? We even ____________ to talk to a Danish woman who said, “We have a(n) ____________ in my country: when you go backwards to everyone else, it's because you're avoiding something.” I couldn't believe it. We were just enjoying connecting with nature, hiking the way that best ____________ us. Had we gone the “wrong” way? No. At least, not for us.

I decided to ____________ the path I chose. ____________, we had an amazing experience. Choosing the “wrong” path was right for me. When your inner ____________ tells you something is right (or wrong), listen to it. It's your instinct. It's speaking to you for a reason and it knows, better than anyone, what's best for you.

It was a rainy November morning. Overcome with anger I knew if I didn’t leave the house soon I would lose my temper with my husband, Joe. As rain came down in sheets, Joe offered to take me to work. I struggled into my jacket, seized my bag and teaching plans and ignored him.

He insisted and reached for his boots. I looked at the piles of newspapers and the dirty dishes still on the table. “Don’t you have enough to do？I can take care of myself.” I stormed out, not even kissing him good-bye. Joe shouted after me not to take the shortcut.

Joe and I had been eagerly looking forward to our retirement when heart a attack that past spring forced him to leave his job earlier than we had planned. As the medical bills mounted we realized I would have to continue working full-time while Joe stayed home and took over the housework.

The new arrangement was a disaster. Exhausted after a day of full work, all I wanted was hot homecooked meal and a good night’s sleep. However, what greeted me at the table was a microwave package. Sometimes he would serve oatmeal for several nights in a row. One night when I dragged myself to bed, I was terrified to discover Joe had turned our white sheets blue: He told me he had found out how to save on water, soap and electricity. He patted his blue trousers and announced proudly washing everything together was just the secret.

Ten minutes later, ignoring Joe’s warning I turned off the main route. I thought it hadn’t rained enough to flood the road, but as I rounded the corner water rushed across my path. After a few feet, the car got stuck. I opened the door and water poured in. I hurriedly closed the door. I couldn’t risk walking in this. Almost 20 minutes passed. The car began to shake. I got frightened to death when I heard three long honks.

Looking over my shoulder, I stared into the flashing lights of a truck.

I screamed that I couldn’t make it.

6 . “Don’t get sick in July!”

This is a common concern in teaching hospitals in the U.S. It’s driven by the academic calendar: July is when the new interns, fresh out of medical school, start work. In other words, it’s when everyone is most ________. The theory is that this disadvantage leads to mistakes.

So is medical experience good or bad? Well, in most cases, your doctor’s experience is very helpful, allowing her to pick up on a(n) ________ symptom early in a disease process, when machines still can’t take a hand. She can also determine the right treatment when your condition falls outside of what is in the ________, where newbies get most of their ideas. For many medical treatments, there’s a direct connection between physician experience and your treating outcome.

In a variety of situations, though, experience can backfire. The reason is simple ________. Doctors are humans too and they ________ tricks of the mind—like believing that an ineffective treatment really works. In fact, entire fields of research are devoted to understanding why these errors of thought occur. They ________ from so-called cognitive prejudice that can mislead even ________ practitioners into making the wrong decisions.

Doctors are usually locked onto a diagnosis early and disregard new and ________ information. For example, a patient may be diagnosed with a quickly fatal cancer, but then ends up trying various herbal remedies and lives for 30 more years. Instead of analyzing the ________ diagnosis, the patient, and maybe even the doctor, may assume that the herbal remedies cured the cancer.

Also, some experienced doctors tend to believe evidence when it supports their previous opinion while subconsciously ignoring information opposing it. Let’s say your doctor is pretty certain you have ill digestion and orders a test to________ the suspicion, which produces negative result. But she treats you for ill digestion anyway because she was ________ with the prior diagnosis by experience.

In fact, there are clearly many benefits to having a highly experienced doctor, such as technical proficiency. But there may actually be some unexpected benefits to having a less-experienced one too. She may have a more up-to-date education, boundless energy and perhaps is less vulnerable to biases, freed from the same ________ for years.

To safeguard yourself as a patient, one thing you should always do is ________. It may not always be possible to determine that your doctor has met with an unconscious thinking ________. But asking questions does force your doctor to think twice and ________ her decision about your case.

7 . Though people have discussed the relationship between science and nature for many years, there is no consensual(统一的) explanation. While some view science as a powerful tool in ______ nature’s source of power, others view it as a danger. One example is Barry Commoner’s article, Unraveling(解开) the DNA Myth, which explains the recent developments in DNA technology and expresses ______. Another example is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, The Birthmark. It is a tale about a famous scientist, Aylmer, who seems to be unraveling nature’s deepest secrets one by one. Despite all of his ______ and vast understanding of science, Aylmer is unable to direct that knowledge into ______ free from nature’s grasp. He was unable to rid his wife of her birthmark and, in the end, killed her.

Despite the different presentations of the concepts, though time separated the two men, both pieces express a similar view on the relationship between science and nature. Both pieces suggest that nature is ______ and holds wonders, secrets, and powers that many scientists constantly dream about discovering. Although there is a gap of one hundred and sixty years, Commoner still shares and gives evidence to Hawthorne’s beliefs that there is a unique ______ in nature that cannot be discovered or understood through science and that the ______ to uncover nature’s secrets are ______ and can lead to disaster. According to Commoner, nature’s universal power continues to prevent and control their discoveries. Commoner criticizes and ______ doubt on the true power of science.

As Commoner’s article suggests, nature only allows science to have limited power and success. Both men believe that complete trust in science is ______, however wonderful and groundbreaking some scientific discoveries are. Commoner believes that people only seem to focus on the few achievements, while avoiding and ignoring all of the laws. For example, “most clones exhibit developmental failure before or soon after birth”. By stressing all of the ______ and shortcomings of science, he conveys the notion that nature’s secrets are well kept and far from being understood and ______ by man. The government and private companies have invested billions of dollars in mapping the human genome, but we still have no ______ for it. Such a discovery is useless, however interesting it might be.

Commoner’s article clearly represents science as weak and useless, but more importantly, dangerous. It gives evidence to support the suggested dangers ______ with science’s attempts to discover nature’s power. If the result is not ______ dangerous, it can still have harmful side effects.

8 . Although it is difficult to make direct year-to-year comparisons because of increase in viewing on digital devices, the trend over the past decade is clear in numerous studies, including the Nielsen ratings. The average age of those who watch nationally televised Major League Baseball games has been _____ these years. Asked in a survey whether they _____ baseball, nearly two-thirds of those ages 18 to 36 said no.

Michael Haupert, a professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin ----la Crosse who studies baseball as a business, explains why many young people might be _____ by what to an older and more knowledgeable fan is one of the most exciting experiences in sports: a no-hitter. ” Failure is more ______ than success,” he says. ”If my students get a third of the answers right on their test, they fail. However, if a ballplayer gets a hit a third of the time, he’s often one of the _____ .” But watch an NBA game for 15 seconds, and you will likely see one team score.

It is not surprising that ______ the length of games----about three hours in recent years-----and increasing the pace of action has become a subject of discussion among those who love baseball. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is strongly ______ of both. For the 2018 season, the league issued a set of new rules designed to do just that. Mound visits are limited. A timer countdown is designed to shorten the break between innings(局).

No one knows if any of these changes will significantly shorten games. According to MLB, the average length of a nine-inning outing this season has been three hours---about five minutes shorter than the 2017 average, itself the longest mean on record.

All of those proposed changes seem to ______ the point. I interviewed at least 100 semi-fans in their late teens and early 20s for my recent book. All considered themselves fans to some degree, though they ______   watched more than snatches—on iPads or smartphones. They told me it made no difference whether a game lasted two or three hours: they would not pay attention for _____ amount of time.

The historic May 14 Supreme Court decision allowing all states to legalize sports betting could have an impact on all this. More people will soon be able to gamble on sports while watching a game on their couch. But whether ______ gambling will attract more young people to baseball is a huge unknown. Many already gamble, both legally and illegally, on fantasy sports, but legalization will provide yet another ______ during games in real time. Will some states allow betting reports in broadcasts? Will it make the young more likely to bet on baseball than on other sports? Stay tuned.

I don’t know what will hook young people on baseball. But abandoning the game’s unique selling proposition---the timelessness that provides both suspense and great conversationhe educated fan -----is not the ______ . Baseball, Clark told me, is like a game of chess---and too many ______ - changes might turn it into something “more similar to a game of checkers.” Baseball may survive in spite of its challenges, precisely because it stands out and stands up against the short ______ spans that negatively affect every aspect of our culture, including politics and education. As Casey Stengel is reported to have said,” Never make predictions, especially about the future. ”