1 . About a decade ago, I attended a dinner in Guangzhou. The bird’s nest soup was gentle and delicious, the fish fresh and perfectly steamed. The most memorable dish, however, was the plain soup served at the end. Made from chicken, probably with ham as well, it was simple but perfect.
Ending a banquet with soup may seem odd to Westerners, accustomed as they are to sweets at a meal’s close. But, as Fuchsia Dunlop, an English food writer, explains in her new book, Invitation to a Banquet, “The transparent soup is an ideal conclusion to a meal.”
Invitation to a Banquet is Ms Dunlop’s seventh book. Unlike those for which she is best known, including The Food of Sichuan, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, and Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook(about Hunanese cuisine), this is not a cookbook. Instead, she has chosen 30 dishes and used each to illustrate different aspects of Chinese cuisine—and, in turn, Chinese life and history.
“Westerners have traditionally assumed that the Chinese eat animal parts because they are poor, when in fact turning up one’s nose at pigs’ heads and legs shuts the door on a wide range of foods that are really wonderful,” Ms Dunlop argues in the book.
In short, Ms Dunlop has made a convincing case for the superiority of Chinese cuisine, but in a delighted and expansive rather than chauvinistic (沙文主义的) way. She shows how it has absorbed foreign influences(as other cuisines have, too), how it has changed with China’s increasing wealth and how central it is to the country’s intellectual and cultural history.
She makes an equally good case in this book that the Chinese food most Westerners can find at their local takeaway is neither inauthentic nor wrong. Instead, it reflects local tastes which are as representative of the cuisine’s diversity as a frozen pizza is of Italy’s adventurousness. The local takeaway has made the real thing more accessible than ever outside China.
1. Which word best describes the author’s impression of the dinner in Guangzhou?A.Favorable. | B.Conservative. | C.Negative. | D.Unclear. |
A.Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper. | B.The Food of Sichuan. |
C.Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. | D.Invitation to a Banquet. |
A.Avoid eating pigs’ heads and legs. | B.Go to the most expensive restaurants. |
C.Be open-minded about any Chinese food. | D.Don’t try the local takeaway outside China. |
A.A cookbook. | B.A book review. | C.A biography. | D.A travel journal. |
2 . Best Books for Children 2024
Who’s Cute? by Camilla Reid
Meet the cute woodland creatures in the forest and find out which is the cutest. Will it be the tiny, baby rabbit, the little mouse or the young, wide-eyed owl? An adorably illustrated board book for babies and toddlers with a surprise mirror ending, Who’s Cute? will be read and enjoyed time and again.
Keep Smiling by Floella Benjamin
Vina is known for her smile; her mum says that sharing it is the best gift she can give. But the day she starts her new school, Vina finds that her smile has mysteriously disappeared. As she searches for it all over the school, she learns that sometimes happiness is found in the most unexpected places. With its message of positivity, this book offers a great starting point to help young children to talk about their feelings.
The Little Mermaid by Campbell Books
Dive in the sea with this best-loved fairy tale, The Little Mermaid. This board book’s push, pull and turn mechanisms give little hands many surprises to discover as they follow the underwater adventures. Nneka Myers’ bright, bold illustrations of the little mermaid, the prince, the sea witch (巫师) and many more favorite characters will attract babies and toddlers as you read the story together.
I’m Not Scary! by Rod Campbell
A fun touch-and-feel mini-beasts story from Rod Campbell, creator of the preschool lift-the-flap classic, Dear Zoo. Join in the fun by touching a scritchy-scratchy grasshopper, a shiny beetle and even a slimy snail in I’m Not Scary!, an interactive touch-and-feel book, packed full of favorite bugs and mini-beasts. But will you be brave enough to touch all the creatures?
1. What does Keep Smiling teach readers about?A.How to adapt to a new life. | B.Being brave to express oneself. |
C.Being creative when making friends. | D.Where to find happiness. |
A.They have illustrations. | B.They teach ocean diving. |
C.They are fairy tales. | D.They involve sea creatures. |
A.Rod Campbell’s. | B.Camilla Reid’s. |
C.Campbell Books’. | D.Floella Benjamin’s. |
1. What can students do at the online club?
A.Write book comments. | B.Discuss books. | C.Talk to the writers. |
A.Many teenagers like reading. |
B.The club is popular with students. |
C.Students do school projects easily. |
A.About 800. | B.About 1,000. | C.About 1,200. |
A.By paying some money. | B.By donating a book. | C.By filling in a form online. |
1. How does Rose feel about Peter’s poetry?
A.Classic. | B.Unique. | C.Romantic. |
A.On Monday. | B.On Thursday. | C.On Tuesday. |
A.Love. | B.Friendship. | C.Nature. |
A.John Keats’. | B.Emily Dickinson’s. | C.William Wordsworth’s. |
5 . What makes a good reader? You can find the answer in Readers Club. Today, we have some books for you. Come and join the fun!
The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1953. A year later, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Old Man and the Sea is generally considered by many to be his greatest achievement. The leading character in this book is a person who can face difficulties and never give up.Hardback ¥21.70 Paperback ¥16.00
Heart, written by Edmondo De Amicis from Italy, is a diary of an Italian boy Eric. In his diary, he writes about the greatest love in the world: love for the nation, for the society, and also teachers’ love, classmates’ love, parents’ love, children’s love.
Hardback ¥27.20 Paperback ¥16.40
Peter Pan, created by Scottish novelist and playwright J.M. Barrie. Peter Pan is a young boy who can fly and never grows up. He spends his never-ending childhood having adventures (冒险) on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, playing happily with children both inside and outside Neverland.
Hardback ¥22.70 Paperback ¥14.60
Club members will get a discount (折扣) of 10% for hardback books and 20% for paperback books.
If you buy any of the two hardback books, e-books will be free for you.
1. Who won the Nobel Prize for literature?A.Hemingway. | B.Leo Tolstoy. | C.Edmondo De Amicis. | D.Eric |
A.Love. | B.Success. | C.Adventure. | D.loss. |
A.A boy who likes keeping diaries. |
B.A boy who always misses his family. |
C.A boy who enjoys his never-ending childhood. |
D.A boy who loves his teachers and classmates. |
6 . An 80-foot floating library, built in 1963 and called Bokbaten in Norway, visited around 250 small communes along the west coast of Norway twice every year before 2020. Many of the villages along the west coast of Norway are most easily accessible by boat rather than car, so in 1959, a group of librarians got government funding to s art a waterborne library service with special on stress on children’s literature.
Large enough to hold around 6, 000 books, the boat also hosted readings, children’s pays, and other cultural events onboard. It traveled along the coast on 64-day tours during the fall and winter months, welcoming up to 150 children at a time and unloading books for each community to keep until the boat made it swayback the next time around. In summer, the library was repurposed as a tourist boat.
But in 2020, it looked like it might be the end for the library. After nearly 60 years in action, the popular boat had its funding cut by the government, which ended the floating library program. “The book boat is a floating house of culture, which means a lot to thousands of children in the communities that don’t have a good library offering,” Norwegian librarian and author Stig Holmas wrote on Facebook at the time. “It has large numbers of visits,” he went on, adding: “What a shame!”
Luckily, 28 local municipalities (市政当局) banded together in support of the beloved library, helping organize 88 cultural events to make people realize the importance of the boat between August and November 2021. Then, in February 2022, the Fritt Ord Foundation, a private Norwegian nonprofit, provided the library with nearly $300, 000 to keep the program running. Later that year, journalist Maria PileS vas and, whose grandfather built the library, was employed as manager for Bokbaten.
The boat is now a traveling bookstore, and it continues to carry on the tradition of inviting authors, actors and musicians to come aboard and perform live readings for children.
1. What do we know about Bokbaten?A.It also held a variety of activities. |
B.It was not that popular in the summer. |
C.It was suggested by the 250 communities. |
D.It allowed people to keep the book for 64 days. |
A.Relieved. | B.Shocked. | C.Puzzled. | D.Angry. |
A.They provided enough funds for the library. |
B.They helped to promote the value of the library. |
C.They invited Maria Pile Svasand to manage Bokbaten. |
D.They set up the Fritt Ord Foundation to raise funds for Bokbaten. |
A.Why the floating library in Norway is so popular |
B.The establishment of a floating library in Norway |
C.How a floating library in Norway was saved |
D.The influence of a floating library in Norway |
1. What do the speakers agree on heroes?
A.They are like Superman in films. |
B.They achieve great success in their work. |
C.They are common people making important contributions. |
A.His grandfather. | B.Great writers. | C.Superman. |
A.Unusual. | B.Realistic. | C.Dull. |
A.It’s hard to find great books. |
B.It’s great to do some reading. |
C.It’s good to help some people. |
8 . Nearly two decades ago when the Google Books Project digitized and freely distributed more than 25 million works, book publishers argued that free digital distribution weakens the market for physical books. However, new research from Imke Reimers and Abhishek Nagaraj reveals that the opposite—increased demand for physical books, through online discovery—could be true.
The two researchers focused on a particular part of Google Books’ digitized works: those from Harvard University’s Widener Library, which helped seed the project in its early days. The condition that enabled their experiment: Harvard’s digitization effort only included out-of-copyright works, published before 1923, which were made available to consumers in their entirety. The works from 1923 and later were still copyrighted and not digitized.
The researchers analyzed a total of 37,743 books scanned (扫描) between 2005 and 2009. They looked at sales for the two years before this digitization period and the two years after, and found clear differences in the increased sales between digitized and non-digitized books. Approximately 40% of digitized titles saw a sales increase from 2003-2004 to 2010-2011, compared to less than 20% of titles that were not digitized. The increase in sales was also found to be stronger for less popular books.
“If a book is readily available online, people may decide that it’s a useful book and want to buy it,” Reimers said. “The ‘discovery effect’, which even increased the sales of a digitized author’s non-digitized works, is a strong driver of increased sales. It’s not a huge jump in sales, but it’s still good news for publishers.”
“And book lovers,” Reimers said, “are known for their preference for physical books, as opposed to digital versions, which could also play a role.” She added, “Whenever I talk to people about my research on books, at some point they all say, ‘I just love the feel of a book in my hand.’”
1. Why did the researchers choose the publications before 1923 for their research?A.They were all masterpieces. | B.They were mostly searchable. |
C.They were not protected by copyright. | D.They were only partly downloaded for free. |
A.By interviewing book users. | B.By comparing the sales data. |
C.By classifying the book titles. | D.By referring to historical records. |
A.To point out the limitations of the study. | B.To stress people’s different reading tastes. |
C.To tell another contributor to the sales rise. | D.To show a growing trend in reading books. |
A.Consumers Are Enthusiastic About E-books |
B.Book Publishers Object to Digitizing Books |
C.Physical Bookstores Are Declining in Importance |
D.Digitizing Books Promotes Demand for Physical Copies |
1. Whose book has the woman been reading lately?
A.Aaron Esterson. | B.Lori Gottlieb. | C.Erik Erikson. |
A.It has an unexpected end. |
B.It is very boring. |
C.It is fantastic. |
A.Read the book. | B.Start writing a book. | C.Talk with someone. |
10 . One Saturday last November, I stepped into my local library. I was about to read a book when I heard an elderly man speak to a lady. “This library will soon become a café. Everyone is reading with electronic devices,” he said. Hearing this, I wanted to shout, “I still read library books!” But my words stuck in my throat and I found teenagers around me were talking to friends or staring at their phones.
Reading online feels robotic to me. It’s like I stare at a screen and click “next” for the following page to appear until the very end of the e-book, and at the end of all of that, I just think, “That’s it?” But when I read a printed book, it’s like I’m holding on to the characters. I can imagine the plot better, as I can picture the scenes of each moment in my head with more accuracy and imagination.
Besides, some online books miss components (组成部分) that are in the printed novels. For instance, the physical copy of a fantasy novel I have read contains a map, but the e-book version does not. That is an injustice to e-book users; after reading and understanding the map, the story made a lot more sense for me, in terms of the setting and plot.
And personally, physically turning to the next page is better than clicking “next”. When reading online, I sometimes worry that I click “next” too quickly. It feels more like a race; I want to finish it because the pages just keep making that “flipping” sound and I wonder how long the book really is.
Some printed books have a special smell that makes the novel feel special to me. It’s hard to describe but I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks so. I know I cannot convince every teen to switch from the digital book to the printed one, but maybe my writing about the difference will at least get some of them to think about it.
1. Why will the library be replaced by a café?A.Few people head for it. | B.It lacks good management. |
C.Few people read its books. | D.It holds little attraction for the youth. |
A.They include additional contents. |
B.They leave a lively impression. |
C.They have a special pleasant smell. |
D.They can improve readers’ imagination. |
A.Making her tired of reading. | B.Leading her to read aimlessly. |
C.Bringing more fun to her. | D.Stopping her digging into reading. |
A.To inspire teenagers’ interest in reading. |
B.To show advantages of printed books. |
C.To reduce the impact of electronic devices. |
D.To encourage teens to change the reading medium. |