8 . You may know the saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” It _________ the idea behind the Living Library project. Like _________ library, a Living Liberty offers readers books, except that these “books” can _________ to you. But these living books are not like anything from a(n) _________ movie — they are people like you and me.

The Living Library project was started in 2000 by a group of young people in Denmark. They wanted to reduce _________ and encourage understanding between people, and they had the idea of bringing together some very different people to communicate _________. These living books were from different cultural backgrounds, nations, educational levels, religions and _________.

Reading living books is very _________: Each book can talk with readers face to face, and sometimes a small group of readers can read one book together. The book and the reader(s) _________ and share different thoughts, ideas, lifestyles and so on.

The project began to gain in __________ in other parts of the world and was introduced to China in 2009. This past April, a wave of Living Library events was held in more than 20 Chinese cities. In Guangzhou, for example, 50 living books were presented to 200 readers.

The event was divided into four rounds; each lasted 40 minutes. In each round, __________ eight readers would read one book together. One of the living books, Tang, suffered from depression. She talked about her experience of fighting depression and also pointed out a problem: People’s __________ about mental illnesses was preventing many patients from getting treatment in time.

In Living Library events like this one, it is not one person __________ another, but someone introducing others to a different idea or way of life. Everyone can raise questions and everyone is __________.

“Everyone is a book,” said Liu Qiongxiong, the organizer of the event in Guangzhou. “By reading others we can better understand each other and__________.”

What makes the perfect winter read?

As the weather turns and the sky darkens, autumn and winter can often feel like the perfect time for curling up with a good book.

But I wonder if it’s just me who finds that my reading     1     seem to change along with the seasons? The books I might choose to read in some sunny garden are very different from the ones I want when the wind is blowing outside and a few precious hours of watery daylight are the best we can hope for.

I always     2     writing that evokes (唤起) time and place, and in the midst of the coldest, darkest part of the year, I want more than ever for a book to be “a ball of light” in my hands, as Ezra Pound famously once put it — a(n)     3     of life and love.

I also need a certain degree of comfortness in a winter read — something that will keep me warm when the weather won’t! Give me gothic (哥特式的) building in the snow, with heroines whose passions burn brightly. Or let me escape completely, into some fantasy     4     — but I’d still like my forests icy and pine smelling. Give me stories of     5     and re-birth. Remind me that this time of year has     6    , too.

Katherine May’s beautiful, poetic deep thought on the season, Wintering, does precisely this. Seemingly, it’s     7    , combining aspects of her life with more universal thoughts on how we might winter well. But there’s a lyrical (抒情的),     8     quality to the writing that confuses plain concepts like “genre”. She     9     that in winter we need different tools to get us through the season and it also offers one such tool, since Wintering itself is the perfect guide book and     10     to see you through until spring.

That’s why books that help me see the beauty of the season will always be high on my list of winter reads.