7 . Best Books Of All Time

If you want to fill your shelves with the best books of all time, you’re in the right place.

The imagination of Shel Silverstein is on full display in this classic collection of short stories and poems. Where the Sidewalk Ends is truly one of the best poetry books of all time because of its staying power for children The stories of this American poet, author, singer, and folk artist have something for everyone.

Most critics regard it as one of most iconic literary love stories. Leo Tolstoy’s Russian tale of unfortunate lovers is filled with fascinating quotes like, “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.” Described by Fyodor Dostoevsky as “flawless”, this one belongs on any book collector’s shelf.

The Little Prince is a timeless tale of a prince’s journey from planet to planet in search of adventure. What he finds, however, are interactions with adults who leave him frustrated. In the Sahara Desert, he runs into the books narrator, and the two start an eight-day journey filled with lessons. It’s one of the most fascinating short books we’ve ever read. It’s also one of the most widely read children’s classics all over the world.

The maser of suspense(悬念) must be included in any lit of books you should read in a lifetime. That’s why you’ll find Stephen King’s The Shining here. Jack Torrance is a middle-aged man looking for a fresh start. He thinks he’s found it when he lands a job as the caretaker at an old hotel. But as snow piles higher outside, the hotel begins to feel more evil and dangerous, less freeing. Fans take note: This is one of the scariest and best Stephen King books of all time.

8 . Background noise—like the chatter in a coffee shop or the drone of passing traffic—might slow our reading speed, but according to a study of Russian readers, it doesn’t _________ how our brain understands written text.

_________, if you’re wondering whether you should be listening to podcasts or music while working, the study has some interesting points to make. In particular, it examined how we might change our reading style to compensate for auditory noise and visual distractions such as typos or poor formatting.

“Overall, previous studies reported a harmful effect of both auditory and visual noise on reading fluency and _________, though their results varied,” write linguistics researcher Nina Zdorova and colleagues. “So far, none of the studies exploring the influence of noise _________ it in the framework of the language processing theories.”

One of the language processing theories examined was the noisy channel model, which proposes that our brain deals with noise by looking at the meaning of _________ words more and at entire sentences less. We then use a bit of smart guesswork to _________ the overall meaning and relationships between words.

The second theory is the good enough model; that’s when our brains aren’t analyzing every single detail of a text but instead only grabbing enough words for a ‘good enough’ understanding. By focusing less on the precise words, our brains can _________ some cognitive resources to deal with noise.

To see how reading was affected by noise _________ these models, the researchers ran two experiments: one on auditory noise (71 participants) and one on visual noise (70 participants). When it came to the auditory noise test, background chatter from overlapping podcasts caused people to spend longer looking at the key section of sentences before completing their reading. This extra time could _________ the noise, meaning sentence comprehension isn’t affected by it. In the visual noise test, comprehension remained the same while reading speed __________. That’s a bit __________ considering previous studies, but the researchers think people just wanted to finish the task, with the visual noise an uncomfortable distraction.

There’s a lot going on in this study, but overall it’s a bigger win for the good-enough language processing theory and an indication that auditory and visual noise doesn’t make us __________ any more or less on any particular comprehension method while we’re reading.

With so many variables to measure in terms of what’s being read and what the __________ noise is, further study is required to learn more. __________ potential distractions may not interrupt your reading as much as you think.