1 . In 1949, I just returned home from the war. On every American highway you could see soldiers in uniform hitchhiking (搭便车) home to their families, as was the ___at that time in America.

___, the excitement of this reunion with my family soon disappeared. My mother became very ill and had to be in hospital. The doctors told me she ___a blood transfusion (输血)   ___or she wouldn’t live through the night. The problem was that Mother’s blood type was AB-, a very ___type even today, but even harder to get then because there were no blood ___ or air flights to ship blood. All the family members had their ___tested, but none was a   ___. So the doctors gave the family no hope. My mother was ___.

I left the hospital ___to gather up all the family members, ___everyone would get a chance to tell Mother good-bye. ___down the highway, I passed a soldier in uniform hitch-hiking home to his family. Deep in sadness, I had no willingness at that moment to do a good deed. Yet it was almost as if something outside myself pulled me to a ___, and I waited as the stranger climbed into the car.

I was too upset to ___ask the soldier his name, but he noticed my tears right away and asked why. I told this total stranger ___.

It got very ___in the car. Then this soldier reached his hand out to me, in which rested the dog tags (身份识别证) from around his neck. The blood type on the tags was AB-. The soldier   ___me to turn the car ___and get him to the hospital.

My mother ___until 1996, and to this day no one in our family knows the soldier’s name. But I have often wondered, was he a soldier or a(n) ___in uniform?

2 . I grew up in a house where the TV was seldom turned on. With one wall in my bedroom entirely ______ with bookshelves, most of my childhood was ______ on books I could get hold of. In fact, I grew up thinking of reading as ______ as breathing and books unbelievably powerful in ______ perspectives (观点) by creating worlds we could step into, take part in and live in.

With this ______ belief, I, at fourteen, decided to become a writer. Here too, reading became ________. Every writer starts off ______ that he has something to say, but being unable to find the _______ ways to say it. He has to find his own voice by reading widely and ______ which parts of the writers he agrees or disagrees with, or agrees with so strongly that it ______ his own world. He cannot write without loving to read, ______ only through reading other people’s writing can one discover what works, what doesn’t and, in the end, together with lots of practice, what voice he has.

Now I am in college, and have come to realize how ______ it is to read fiction (文学作品)．As a law student, my reading is in fact ______ to subject matter—the volume of what I have to read for classes every week ______ there is little time to read anything else. Such reading made it all the ______ to me that I live in a very small part in this great place called ______. Reading fiction ______ me that there is life beyond my own. It allows me to travel ______ the high seas and along the Silk Road, all from the ______ of my own armchair, to experience, though secondhand, exciting experiences that I wouldn’t   ______ be able to have in my lifetime.