1 . Hannah, an adventurous girl, lived in a small village on a land far away. All of the villagers were used to their ________ tasks and very few had the will to try something new. Unlike them, Hannah loved to ________ and would spend hours in the woods looking for new things.

One afternoon, she ________ an abandoned cottage. With curiosity she slowly opened the door and was left ________. In front of her was a room full of books glittering in the dust! She gasped as she ________ that she had found a hidden treasure. Before leaving, she ________ two books and decided to read them at her home.

From that day on, Hannah ________ read the books, which took her to a world of talking animals, mystical creatures, and daring knights. She read about characters who faced ________ with their determination and characters who ________ for good. She learned the power of love and friendship, and that the true strength lies within one’s own ________!

With the good in heart, Hannah started to ________ the gold from the tales with the people of her village. Soon, the ________ of Hannah’s storytelling spread. People traveled from different places to listen to her stories. ________, Hannah started writing stories of her own too!

Hannah’s passion and ________ blew life into the tales and her words breathed new life into countless souls. She became a beacon (灯塔) of ________, a reminder for everyone that even in the dustiest corners, there can be a hidden treasure.

2 . There are always some persons in your life who touch your soft heart with kindness.

As a little girl, my favorite thing was _________. And when I thought about _________ I wanted to be when I grew up, I figured I’d be a librarian, just because the two librarians changed my life.

At that time, the town library limited the number of books a person borrowed _________ two once a week. I _________ the books in just three days. So to read more, I was _________ about what books to choose. The librarian, Mrs. Tonne, was a warm person. Every time I went into the library, she greeted me, _________. When learning about my trouble, she often _________ some better books. Thanks to her help, I _________ a lot from these books.

Gradually, I developed an interest in writing, _________ poems. When I was in fourth grade, our school librarian, Mrs. Ketelsen, encouraged me to write more. When my poem was not accepted, she __________ me with comfortable words. Once she helped __________ some poems I’d written about dinosaurs to Highlights magazine. It was my first published writing!

Later, at the University of Iowa, __________ I majored in journalism, my dream was different. I realized that I was shy about interviewing people, which made me __________. When I recalled Mrs. Tonne and Mrs. Ketelsen, I made a decision without __________ to be devoted to writing. And now I am an editor at Reader’s Digest.

Whenever I think of the help from them, how __________ I am. It is their kindness that makes me what I am.

3 . When I was young, I was a terrible student. I didn’t ________ talking with my grandmother on the phone, because she would ask me about school and about what I was reading.

Each Christmas, I would get a package from Grandmother. “Another ________. Just like every year!” I would think and then put it aside. I would ________all my latest toys on Christmas morning and for days and even weeks after.________, I would open Grandmother’s gift. I would read the book and sometimes ________ the text, but I didn’t find this interesting.

Although I was not interested in ________, I had great patience with younger children. Seeing how I ________her kid with homework, my neighbor said I should become a teacher when I grew up.

During my second term in college, I ________ in my Children’s Literature class. Our teacher________ a list of classic children’s books. It was then that I wanted to ________. I raced home and ran to the basement (地下室). There on the dusty shelf sat the most amazing collection of children’s books any teacher could ________ to have. My grandmother didn’t ________ me what my little girl mind wanted, but what she knew I ________ — a gift for the soul that would last a lifetime.

I ________ to water the seed my grandmother planted so long ago. I graduated from college, received my master’s degree and became a ________ , trying my best to plant those tiny seeds in all my students.

4 . My 7-year-old daughter always has her nose in a book. She even ________ reading in the car on the long drive to summer camp, where she lost the book. This is the first lost ________ book in my life. In my childhood, my family had always been expected to be ________, but we were poor, and I didn’t own books. I had to borrow books. My library books lived on a ________ shelf while they were mine, and it________ me when I had to return them to the library on the due day.

However, my daughter has more books now than I ________ during my whole childhood. So it’s probably my ________that she didn’t cherish the books. “Sorry. I can’t find it.” My daughter said with a________ “We just pay $ 20 for the book. What’s the big ________?” The missing library book just met with a cold _________ from her, but it met with nail-biting ________ from me. I walked into the library in a deep ________ as if I had lost the book.

Feeling the need to make her feel ________ for the book, I________ her to do the chores. She agreed to clean up all the pets’ houses ________ my paying the library book. I’d meant the chore to be ________!            

Surprisingly, she was enjoying herself. I took a picture of her lovely back. So, was I winning or losing at ________? Did I teach her the ________ of keeping a library book if the picture I took shows she is working ________?

To my ________, my little girl knew what matters in her life. She could devote herself to the chores as much as books.

6 . For many people today, reading is no longer relaxation. To keep up their work they must read letters, reports, trade publications, interoffice communications, not to mention newspapers and magazines; a never-ending flood of words. In getting a job advancing, the ability to read and comprehend ____ can mean the difference between success and failure. Yet the unfortunate fact is that most of us are ____ readers. Most of us develop poor reading habits at an early age, and never ____ them. The main shortage lies in the actual stuff of language itself – words. Taken individually, words have little____ until they are combined together into phrases, sentences and paragraphs. Unfortunately, ____, the untrained reader does not read groups of words. He read one word at a time with difficulty, often regressing to ____ words or passages. Regression, namely, the tendency to look back over what you have just read, is a common ____ habit in reading. Another bad habit which ____ the speed of reading is vocalization –sounding each word either ____ or mentally as one reads.

To overcome these bad habits, some reading clinics use a device called an accelerator, which moves a bar (or curtain) down the page at a predetermined speed. The bar is set a slightly ____ rate than the reader finds comfortable, in order to “____” him. The accelerator forces the reader to read fast, making word-by-word reading, regression and sub-vocalization, practically ____. At first comprehension is ____ speed. But when you learn to read ideas and concepts, you will not only read faster, but your comprehension will improve. Many people have found their reading skill ____ improved after some training. Take Charles Au, a business manager, for instance, his reading rate was a reasonably good 172 words a minute before the training, now it is an excellent 1,378 words a minute. He is delighted that now he can go through a lot more reading material in a(n) ____ period of time.

7 . I had a bad habit of skipping to the last pages of a book. I just wanted to see how it ended ______ I was still in the middle of it. This habit ______ first my mom, then my friends, and ______ even my own daughter. Often my ______ wouldn’t be limited just to the books I read but also to what others were ______ as well. Then one day my daughter told me in anger, “Dad, please just read a book one ______ at a time like everyone else!”

At times I didn’t ______ this bad habit to just books either. I also tried to skip ahead in my own life and ______ out what to do months and even years from now ______ enjoy each day at present. Although I knew that the ______ of my life wasn’t done yet and that I had many pages ______ to go. I still couldn’t control my burning desire to write the ______ of it half-way through. Time and again, I would ______ jump ahead and try to solve every potential problem before it happened. Life, ______, doesn’t work like that. It loves to ______ us, and you never know what new problems, changes or opportunities each new day will ______.

Recently when I found myself living in the ______ again, I felt a voice that gently told me I needed to “live one day at a time.” When I heard those words, I ______, turned the book of my life back to the ______ page, and thanked God for today.

Each of us has to ______ the book of life line by line, moment by moment and trust that our story will be brought to its perfect end.

8 . It's often said that you can judge a person by looking at what's on their bookshelves. Well, when I asked myself this question a few years ago, I made a(n) _______ discovery. Pretty much all the _______ on my bookshelves were written by British authors, and there was almost nothing in translation from other _______. What a shame! So, I decided to begin my _____________ reading project.

But how could I find books from much of the rest of the world? I had to ask for _______. So in October 2011, I started my blog, and I _______ a short appeal (呼吁) online. Within hours, people began to _______. At first, it was friends and colleagues. Then it was friends of friends. And soon, it was _______.

Four days later, I got a(n) _______ from a woman called Rafidah in Kuala Lumpur. She said she loved my project, ________ if she could go to her local English-language bookshop and choose my Malaysian book and post it to me. I ________ accepted, and a few weeks later, a package ________ containing nothing but two books — Rafidah's choice from Malaysia, and a book from Singapore that she had also ________ for me. At the time, I was ________ that a stranger more than 6,000 miles away would go to such lengths to help someone she would probably never ________.

But Rafidah's kindness ________ to be the pattern for that year. Time and again, people went out of their ________ to help me. And books often came from ________ sources. A writer even emailed me an unpublished translation of his novel to me, allowing me to become one of the ________ people ever to read that book in English.

That year, thanks to kind strangers from the four ________ of the world. I read books from over 100 countries.