1 . Food books can bring a culture to life. The following food books are bursting with delicious food, as well as entertaining and engaging storytelling.
 | Pierre Thiam’s latest book aims to share everyday, easy-to-cook recipes like baked ginger-chili plantain kelewele. He explains how so many dishes and ingredients from the American South and other regions can trace their origin to West Africa. The 80 recipes are accessible and present a range of traditional and modern takes on the cuisine. |
 | Fuchsia Dunlop’s book examines classic Chinese dishes, like mapo tofu, soup dumplings and Dongpo pork. This book includes history, philosophy, cooking techniques, and Dunlop’s on-the-ground research conducted over three decades to present a fascinating exploration of this ever-changing cuisine. |
 | Tamar Adler seeks to make leftovers more appealing and lower food waste in the process with her latest book, which contains around 1,500 recipes. This isn’t what you’d call a beautiful coffee table-style cookbook — it’s practical and the creative secrets within are truly mind-blowing. |
 | Natasha Pickowicz is an innovative chef. More Than Cake is her first cookbook, full of invaluable tips like how to build a layer (层) cake. Aside from great baking recipes, this cookbook tries to live up to its name by sharing how baking can provide so much more than just tasty sweets — it can give community, purpose, joy and love. |
1. Who explores Chinese food culture in the cookbook?
| A．Pierre Thiam. | B．Fuchsia Dunlop. |
| C．Tamar Adler. | D．Natasha Pickowicz. |
| A．They are the writers’ latest books. | B．They advocate lower food waste. |
| C．They have the same number of recipes. | D．They aim to share West African dishes. |
| A．Simply West African. | B．Invitation to a Banquet. |
| C．The Everlasting Meal Cookbook. | D．More Than Cake. |
2 . As the saying goes, nobody’s perfect. That means we have room for at least some improvement in our lives. And no, we’re not talking about getting a better-paid job or a new haircut; we’re referring to inner improvement. If you’re wishing for some inner improvement in your lives, consider reading the following books.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens written by Sean Covey
To make this book age-appropriate and fun to read, Covey breaks up the text with cartoons, quotes, and brainstorming ideas to bring the book together. The book covers topics like body image, friendships, Internet safety, and much more. The book is especially good for teenagers.
A New Earth written by Eckhart Tolle
The book goes beyond teaching how to live in the moment and helps readers learn how to turn their suffering into peace. All types of suffering are addressed in the book. Whether your suffering is caused by anger, sadness, anxiety, or others, Tolle will help you see life from varied ways, awakening you to your life’s purpose.
Declutter Your Mind written by Barrie Davenport
This book is full of various exercises. You’ll learn how to change negative thoughts to positive ones, strategies to help with relationships, how to identify what’s important to you, how to set goals, and much more. This powerful book will do its part in offering various tips to deal with an overactive mind.
Big Magic written by Elizabeth Gilbert
From creating new habits to dealing with fear and surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals, Gilbert analyzes the difficulties a creative person may face in pursuing his dreams. The best part of this book is the usage of stories from regular men and women across the country.
1. Which book best suits one who’s struggling to find life’s purpose?| A．The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. | B．A New Earth. |
| C．Declutter Your Mind. | D．Big Magic. |
| A．Sean Covey. | B．Eckhart Tolle. |
| C．Barrie Davenport. | D．Elizabeth Gilbert. |
| A．Self-help books. | B．Science books. |
| C．Health books. | D．Adventure books. |
| A．The man needs to finish the book. |
| B．The book is boring. |
| C．The man should check with his professor. |
4 . Book Recommendation
Olive, Mabel and Me by Andrew Cotter
This is a funny telling of how a sports commentator turned his two dogs into Internet sensations (轰动). If you’ve seen videos of dogs and laughed your but t off, the book provides the same humor, along with wonderful pictures of dogs and Scottish highlands. Let’s face it—who doesn’t need a good laugh, and pictures of dogs?
—Isabel Quintana
Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker
A mystery series focused on Bruno Courrèges, the chief of police in the small town of St. Denis in the Périgord region of southwestern France. Walker brings his knowledge both as a journalist and as a resident of St. Denis to these pages, as he explores the culture and socio-economic changes occurring in contemporary rural France.
—Edward Copenhagen
Land of Aeolia by Ilias Venezis, translated by Therese Sellers
The author writes of his peaceful childhood summers in Anatolia, before the horrors of World War I and the loss of his homeland. This is a beautiful novel that is beyond language and country and brings back memories of a lost world. I have found some English translations of modern Greek literature lacking the ability to express the richness of the Greek language, but Sellers deals with this playful and magical language beautifully.
—Rhea Lesage
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I wish everyone hoping to start a home garden could read the chapter The Three Sisters. The author, an authority on plant study, describes how the three work and play together. She expertly creates a sense of mystery and beauty of everyday life. And she reminds readers how much we could learn from our sisters and brothers.
—Steve Shutt
1. Which book should you read to learn about French culture?| A．Olive, Mabel and Me. | B．Bruno, Chiefof Police. |
| C．Land of Aeolia. | D．Braiding Sweetgrass. |
| A．It’s well translated. | B．It lacks richness. |
| C．It’s about World War I. | D．It tells a story of magic. |
| A．A botanist. | B．A journalist. | C．A language expert. | D．A sports commentator. |
5 . With such a wide range of platforms and devices available to the everyday reader, the physical book, while not yet extinct, may end up going that way. Why?
With a rapid increase in digital reading platforms, reading is no longer a common problem for bookworms.
Readers can also carry around their favourite books within an e-reader. Common examples include the Amazon Kindle, Onyx Boox, and PocketBook. These hand-held devices offer fantastic portability, readability and variety.
Social media has had a great effect on our reading habits. It governs our daily life. With physical books no longer a key form of entertainment for children, it has been replaced with digital alternatives. Social media and video games have replaced the ways in which we traditionally read and tell stories.
As is known to us all, technology has changed the ways in which we read at home as well as in the classroom.
| A．There are a number of apps out there. |
| B．Books and lessons are delivered online. |
| C．We are still reading but just in a different way. |
| D．Lots of people find it difficult to fit reading into their daily routine. |
| E．Some e-readers also allow users to access the Internet for various purposes. |
| F．There’s nothing worse than realizing you have forgotten your favourite book. |
| G．Here are some ways technology has transformed our reading habits in recent years. |
6 . Four famous classic Italian writers
When speaking of Italian literature, many people come up with Dante. But there are many other famous Italian authors. Below are four recommended writers and their masterpieces.
Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533)
Ariosto is best known for his epic (史诗般的) poem Orlando Furioso, which was published in 1977. As a poet always with new ideas, Ariosto invented the way of “singing the poem to the audience”. The poem presents a rich variety of characters, which has been an encouragement for many paintings and musical works.
Italo Calvino (1923-1985)
Calvino was the author of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler published in 1979. The novel differs from others for its unique description of a frame story - a unifying story within which several tales are related. It has encouraged musicians like Sting to create their works. At the time of his death in 1985, Calvino was one of the world’s most translated Italian writers.
Umberto Eco (1932-2016)
Eco wrote The Name of the Rose, a historical murder mystery (神秘) novel published in 1980. In the story, he skilfully applied the use of signs and symbols to it. A number of his books deal with the meaning and understanding of communication.
Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873)
Manzoni is most famous for his novel The Betrothed published in 1827. The novel was regarded to be connected with Risorgimento, the Italian unification movement(统一运动) in the 19th century. Probably we can say, without this great novelist and this masterpiece of world literature, Italy wouldn’t be Italy.
1. What do Orlando Furioso and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler have in common?| A．They have both influenced musical works. |
| B．They both have related characters and stories. |
| C．They were both published in the same year. |
| D．They are both translated into many languages. |
| A．A unique describing style. | B．A mix of new ideas. |
| C．The use of signs and symbols. | D．The history of a movement. |
| A．Ludovico Ariosto. | B．Italo Calvino. | C．Umberto Eco. | D．Alessandro Manzoni. |
| A．Read a novel. |
| B．See a movie. |
| C．Watch a TV program. |
8 . Books open doors in our minds, allowing us to live an entire lifetime and travel the world without even leaving the comfort of our chairs. Here are 4 books you should read at least once in your life.
Number the Stars
by Lois Lowry
This novel tells the story of Annemarie Yohansen, a Danish girl growing up in World War Ⅱ with her best friend, Ellen, a Jewish. She and her family protected Ellen and her parents from the Nazis. Lowry’s novel is a reminder that cultural and religious differences are no divide between true friends.
The Little Prince
by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
The most-translated book in the French Language, the Little Prince, is the story of a little boy who falls to Earth from an Asteroid (小行星) to try to understand mankind. In his travels he meets a series of strange and delightful characters. It is a heartwarming story of the power of friendship and trust.
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner is the story of the unlikely and complicated friendship between Amir, the son of a wealthy merchant, and Hassan, the son of his father’s servant until the war separates them. It’s a story about the enduring love of friendship, and the power of forgiveness.
The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green
The story recounts the experiences of Hazel, a teenager with cancer, and the experiences of the other teens in her cancer support group. Green captures the struggles of terminal illness with tenderness, reminding us that love, friendship, and faith go beyond all.
1. Which book is set in the second World War?| A．The Little Prince. | B．Number the Stars. |
| C．The Kite Runner. | D．The Fault in Our Stars. |
| A．They are all related to friendship. | B．They are all translated into French. |
| C．They are all based on real experiences. | D．They are all told through children’s view. |
| A．In a novel. | B．In a biography. |
| C．In a magazine. | D．In a history book. |
9 . Today, many people spend a lot of time reading online. Whether reading news or e-books, people are spending more time eyeballing (盯住) screens. While online reading opens up a great deal of knowledge to people, there are some disadvantages too, such as eyestrain, headaches, as well as difficulty in focusing on the text. Now a new reading system, Bionic Reading, developed by Swiss typographic designer Renato Casutt, can help people overcome these issues, and most importantly, it aims to help people read faster online and develop a more in-depth understanding of written content.
The reading system improve the reading process by guiding the eyes through text with artificial fixation points. To make it short: some parts of the words are displayed in bold (粗体). As a result, the reader only focuses on the highlighted letters and lets the brain center complete the rest. Your brain can “read” faster than your eyes, so by essentially reducing the number of letters your eye needs to look at, you can read faster while still preserving the full context.
Cassult discovered the system by accident. He was working on designing a book in a foreign language and realized he could read it if he sectioned it off. He worked for six years to develop Bionic Reading and is still working to adjust it.
A preliminary (初步的) study was conducted by the Swiss Institute InnoSuisee, but more research is needed before it can be definitively shown that the system improves reading. Some people with ADHD (多动症) prove that Bionic Reading helped them focus and comprehend what they are reading. Other people don’t seem to notice a big difference compared to regular text. There’s also no evidence to suggest Bionic Reading is any better than regular text. The best way to know if the Bionic Reader helps you read better online is to try it yourself.
1. What is the main purpose of Bionic Reading?| A．To point out people’s reading problems. |
| B．To teach people necessary reading skills. |
| C．To reduce readers’ screen time and eye stress. |
| D．To improve people’s reading speed and comprehension. |
| A．Words displayed in capital letters. | B．Useful expressions. |
| C．Difficult sentences in the text. | D．Bold letters. |
| A．It is complex. | B．It can be beneficial. |
| C．It needs to be improved. | D．It has little effect on them. |
| A．A reading project for ADHD. | B．A research on language learning. |
| C．A system to help with online reading. | D．A tool for treating reading disability |
10 . It’s known that reading is good for a child’s vocabulary and literacy skills, teaching them math or science concepts and helping them learn history. Apart from those, reading has another benefit. Have you read a story and felt tears well up because of a character’s suffering? If so, that is because you have empathy (共鸣) for the character — and empathy can be learned through various fictions. “It’s a magic eye that sees into other people’s hearts,” explains author Cressida Cowell.
Research shows that human brains react differently to stories and facts. “Many more areas of your brain light up when you’re enjoying a story,” explains Miranda McKearney from EmpathyLab, an organization that builds empathy through reading. “Your brain thinks you are in the story… This means you experience the characters’ thoughts as if they are real.”
Empathy helps you to read people’s emotions and work out the best way to respond. This skill, called emotional intelligence, can make it easier to communicate and connect with people. Research has shown that building empathy can lead to greater kindness and tolerance. One study found that children who read the Harry Potter novels — which tell stories about humans fighting against the evil — were less likely to behave unfairly towards powerless groups including refugees (难民).
This theory has been put into practice by St Michael’s Primary School. After reading The Boy at the Back of the Class — a story about a boy who is a refugee escaping from the war — students in that school were inspired to do a 10-mile walk for the non-profit organization Refugee Action. Their empathy also spurred them to raise £1,000 for people who were forced to leave their homes because of war.
Reading encourages children to empathise with others, which could potentially lead to several beneficial learning outcomes, new research suggests. For society to develop, creative, communicative and empathetic individuals really matter.
1. Why do readers cry about a character’s experience?| A．They have magic eyes. | B．They want to show empathy. |
| C．They understand his feelings | D．They have the same experience. |
| A．The process of building empathy. |
| B．The benefits of developing empathy. |
| C．The definition of emotional intelligence. |
| D．The results of the school’s activity. |
| A．Reminded. | B．Permitted. | C．Persuaded. | D．Encouraged. |
| A．Read to learn empathy. |
| B．Become empathetic to others. |
| C．Put themselves in others’ shoes. |
| D．Read as many books as possible. |
