1 . Here are some of the best nonfiction books of 2021.
Somebody’s Daughter
$16 at Amazon
Ashley C. Ford talks about growing up as a black gird in Indiana, dealing with poverty, the complexities of adolescence, and a tense relationship with her mother. She often wished that she could express her feelings with her father, but failed for reasons she didn’t know. Until one day — after going through a heart-broken experience with a boy, which she kept from her family — her grandmother told her. And what she learned turned her entire world upside down.
Crazy Stories About Racism
$14 at Amazon
New York-based comedian Amber Ruffin, along with her sister Lacey Lamar, share their everyday experiences about their bad conditions. It gets especially bad for Lacey who still lives in their home state of Nebraska, and is a start for these ridiculous but all-too-real encounters (遭遇).
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
$25 at Amazon
If you want to get in touch with your creative side, this book might just be the trick. As the title suggests, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a literary master class that takes readers into the mind of Booker Prize-winning author George Saunders. He discusses what makes great stories, how they work, and what they say about ourselves and today’s world.
All In
$21 at Amazon
Sports legend Billie Jean King writes a self-portrait that talks about the highs and lows of her amazing tennis career, her work in activism, and the ongoing fight for social justice and equality.
1. What is special about Somebody’s Daughter?| A．It tells a girl’s success. | B．It tells a confused girl. |
| C．It tells a girl’s education. | D．It describes a girl’s good luck. |
| A．Something about Ashley C. Ford. | B．A boy’s heart-broken experience. |
| C．The situations of the present society. | D．Experiences about a man of casual racism. |
| A．All In | B．Somebody’s Daughter |
| C．A Swim in a Pond in the Rain | D．Crazy Stories About Racism |
1. What will Adam do in the next two months?
| A．Perform some shows. | B．Write a new book. | C．Share stories with fans. |
| A．It tells stories in the 1990s. |
| B．It is mainly in a funny style. |
| C．It becomes a best-seller in 2021. |
| A．From 1991 to 1994. | B．From 1994 to 1996. | C．From 1996 to 2001. |
| A．At Paris College. | B．At Oxford University. | C．At Westminster School. |
3 . The Internet, search engines, virtual worlds. Have you ever got the feeling that you’re living in a science fiction?
Well, indeed you are.
For more than a century, inventors have been driven to create what sci-fi writers have imagined long before. Buck Rogers inspired a generation of scientists excited about space exploration. Ray Bradbury predicted home-theater systems. William Gibson dreamed up the Internet while writing Neuromancer on a typewriter. Not long after him, Neal Stephenson predicted virtual worlds in his 1991 novel Snow Crash. One of his readers was Philip Rosedale, who loved it so much that he wanted to build a virtual world based on it.
By the late 1990s, technology caught up to the novel, and Rosedale built the virtual world Second Life based on the “Metaverse” from the novel. With 1 million active users, Second Life offers virtual shops, bars, houses and even virtual television studios with virtual celebrities (名人) on virtual talk shows.
“I think it is pretty much what I imagined,” Stephenson says. “I just shoot for the stars, while he makes great things happen.”
But Snow Crash is a dark book. The world in the novel is filled with criminals, violence and environmental problems.
“Science fiction not only puts stars in our hands, it also helps us see the meaning of our work,” Philip Rosedale admits. “It makes it possible for us to see what all of our efforts could eventually lead to.”
In fact, most science fiction authors admit that their work is usually cautionary (警示性的). “While the inventors are rushing ahead and excited about this possibility or that possibility, we’re always standing there warning, ‘Hang on just a second. Let’s think about this a little more’” author William Gibson says. “But most of them will ignore you because they think they already know all things about any given hot topic of the day. But if you can convince them that you’re talking about a planet millions of miles away and hundreds of years in the future or the past, you can actually get them to examine more closely what’s going on right now.”
1. Who was inspired by Neal Stephenson’s work?| A．Buck Rogers. | B．Ray Bradbury. |
| C．William Gibson. | D．Philip Rosedale. |
| A．It is a very violent virtual world. |
| B．It is not based on his fiction strictly. |
| C．He is satisfied with the “Metaverse”. |
| D．More activities should be added to it. |
| A．Sci-fi writers are much wiser than inventors. |
| B．Most inventors do not respect sci-fi writers. |
| C．Sci-fi can help inventors to think more carefully. |
| D．People can easily get excited about the inventions. |
| A．Book review. | B．Technology. |
| C．Economy. | D．Psychology. |
4 . Here are some inspiring and thoughtful books that give you a real thirst for life.
My Family and Other Animals
This is the first book in a much-celebrated trilogy by naturalist Gerald Durrell. The story is about the writer’s childhood spent on the Greek island Corfu. Durrell smartly shares his memories of amazing animals and their curious habits with the reader. This book encourages readers to appreciate the world around them in all its beauty.
Frost and Fire
Extreme weather conditions cause people。age abnormally fast. They now have only 8 days to grow up and get old. These days should be used to learn, get married, and raise children. Through all of that, people manage to fight and be jealous—as if they have decades ahead. This short story teaches the reader that even during a small period of time, one can manage to do a lot …or you could give up and not take any chances.
You Changed My Life
This is a true story that lays at the heart of the French movie The Intouchables. A tale of an inspirational friendship between two people whose roads were never meant to cross-a disabled French aristocrat and an unemployed Algerian immigrant. But they met, and it changed their lives.
The Code of the Woosters
Anyone who enjoys easy and light reading would find books by P. G. Wodehouse a source of lasting amusement. Stories of Jeeves, Wooster, and all of the chaos around them are written with a brilliant sense of humor. These novels are capable of lining your spirits p from zero to limitlessness.
1. What can we know about Frost and Fire?| A．It is themed by friendship. | B．It is set in an unreal world. |
| C．It focuses on climate change. | D．It’s about the writer’s childhood. |
| A．My Family and Other Animals. | B．Frost and Fire. |
| C．You Changed My Lift. | D．The Code of the Woosters |
| A．Man and nature. | B．Health and sports. | C．Book reviews. | D．Amusement. |
5 . Writers of science fiction often feel more prescient (预知的) than others. Whether the threat to women’s rights in the work of Margaret Atwood, the architectural and social dystopias (反乌托邦) of J. G. Ballard’s novels, or the internet-predicting world of E M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, the genre are filled with prescient writers dealing with ever more familiar issues.
Out of all such writers, few seem more likely to predict our times than the American author Philip K. Dick, who died in 1982. In the 30-year period of work, Dick wrote 44 novels and countless short stories, adaptations of which went on to redefine science fiction on screen.
Dick had a surprising ability to predict what would happen in modern world. The famous science-fiction and fantasy author Stan Nicholls suggests Dick’s work is prescient because it explored the future through the then-present. “His stories supposed the popularity of the Internet, virtual reality, facial recognition software, driverless cars and 3D printing,” Nicholls said—while also pointing out that “it’s a misinterpretation that prediction is the primary purpose of science fiction. The genre’s hit rate is actually not very good in that respect. Like all the best science fiction, his stories weren’t really about the future, they were about the here and now.”
Whether his visions were, as he believed, a product of small problems in the simulation or his fading mental health, one thing is for certain—the world in which the work of Philip K. Dick is well known today feels ever closer to the ones imagined by this most unique and exceptional writer.
1. Why does the author mention three writers in paragraph 1?| A．To explain how great their novels are. |
| B．To explain the women’s rights in the future. |
| C．To show science fictions have the foresight. |
| D．To show the same interest of science fictionists. |
| A．He had the capacity to predict the present age. |
| B．He adapted his four short stories for the screen. |
| C．He often had ideas different from the editor’s. |
| D．He died in the USA in the 21st century. |
| A．They are all about other planets. | B．They all focus on the present |
| C．They should develop various themes. | D．They should make readers feel satisfied. |
| A．Philip K Dick had a great impact on science. |
| B．Philip K. Dick had traveled into the future then. |
| C．People don’t agree to Philip K. Dick’s prediction. |
| D．The world in Philip K. Dick’s works is similar to today’s world. |
Our everyday lives are filled with stories with their significance in showing us how we think about
We live storied lives.
Stories are
7 . Books on the History of Ukraine
The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
By Serhii Plokhy
Basic Books; 395 pages; $29.99. Allen Lane; £25
The author is the most distinguished historian of Ukraine (乌克兰) writing in English. This book covers the many centuries in which Ukraine was attacked by powers from all points of the compass. Mr Plokhy shows how Ukrainian language, culture and identity boomed through hardships — which helps explain why Ukrainians are fighting heroically to defend themselves.
Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine
By Anna Reid
Basic Books; 368 pages; $18.99. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; £10.99
The author first published this mixture of memoir (回忆录), travelogue and history in 1997, but updated it in 2015. She introduces appealing Ukrainians, bygone and contemporary, including Taras Shevchenko, the national poet, etc. Ms Reid does not avoid the horrors of the country’s past; but she also finds room for hope.
The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution
By Marci Shore
Yale University Press; 320 pages; $26 and £25
The title comes from a poem by Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the book is an account of prodemocracy (支持民主) revolution in Ukraine in 2013-14. The author describes the feelings of people then — the sense of unity and the motivation of those who headed east to fight the Russian-backed enemies in the Donbas. She also describes the implications of Ukraine’s fate for the future of Europe.
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine
By Anne Applebaum
Doubleday; 496 pages; $35. Allen Lane; £25
The starvation, known as the Holodomor, swept Ukraine in 1932-33, killing around 4 million people. Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer-prize winning author, convincingly argues that the starvation was awful, yet left psychological wealth for Ukrainians who bonded together to preserve their nationalism.
1. Where does the book The Ukrainian Night take its name from?| A．From a film. | B．From a poem. |
| C．From a magazine. | D．From a newspaper. |
| A．Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. |
| B．The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. |
| C．Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. |
| D．The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution. |
| A．They predict the future of Ukraine. | B．They face up to historical challenges. |
| C．They pity Ukrainians for their misfortune. | D．They admit the weaknesses of humans. |
8 . The Four Best Astronomy Books
This list has been updated 24 times since it was first published in 2015. Our selection includes editions specifically written to attract youngsters, some of which are for more advanced students. Each of them contains breathtaking, full-color images.
●The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide
The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide (about $30) is a great resource suitable for beginners and experts. It offers in-depth guidance on everything from picking the perfect telescope to avoiding light pollution, with tips on how best to explore the deep sky.
Features:
Over 500 bright photographs
Detailed maps of the Milky Way
●Far out: A Space-Time Chronicle
Far out: A Space-Time Chronicle (about $25) takes you on a journey through time using the concept of light speed to introduce the vastness of the universe. It’s a real page-turner, with one impressive photo after another, and will let your imagination run wild.
Features:
Making connections to human history
Written in a poetic style
Informative and thoughtful
●NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe
This book (about $18) has sold upwards of 600,000 copies of its three previous editions. It comes with a variety of charts showing various events, such as when to expect a solar and lunar eclipse (日蚀和月蚀).
Features:
Great for those using telescopes
Helpful telescope shopping tips
●Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide
Perfect for ordinary people or those wanting to get a taste of the subject before devoting themselves to a formal class, this book (about $11) makes it easy for them to learn the main topics and basic rules of a college-level course on their own.
Features:
No math required
Self-tests to check progress
Explaining professional terms
1. What can we say about the book Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle?| A．It is funny and strange. | B．It is exciting and imaginative. |
| C．It is breathtaking and popular. | D．It is instructive and challenging. |
| A．Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle | B．The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide |
| C．Astronomy: A Self-Teaching Guide | D．NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe |
| A．They all have colorful pictures. | B．They are all updated regularly. |
| C．They are all aimed at young kids. | D．They all focus on the solar system. |
9 . Are you struggling to find reading materials for your kids? You can try these books.
Johnny Catching Fire
By Aaron Allen
www. xlibris. com
Hardback | Paperback | E-book
$22. 99 | $16. 99 | $3. 99
Johnny somehow gets the strength of super power. Now, he must decide whether to use his power for good or to get even with those who played tricks on him. Young readers can be inspired to think about the choice of life. To forgive? Or the other way around?
The Unequal Twins
By Sylva Kanderal
www. xlibris. com
Hardback |Paperback | E-book
$28.99 | $16.99 | $3.99
What if …the twins Ava and Zoe, who could hardly be distinguished from each other visually and who could not have been more different in character, had to go through severe envy, jealousy, and hate? Where does that road lead to? To a total loss of their connection, or are they finding the lost path to each other again?
How to Help Yourself to Be Who You Want to Be
By Pam Grewall
www. iuniverse. com
Hardback | Paperback | E-book
$23.99 | $13.99 | $3.99
This self-improvement book offers a simple handbook to help kids recognize their strengths and weaknesses and understand how to make their own destiny.
Quotes from the Quiver
By Dante P. Galiber, MD, FACC
www. authorhouse. com
Hardback | Paperback|E-book
$43.99 | $22.99 | $3.99
Inspired by time, space, and human interaction, this collection offers a series of original and thought-provoking ideas and quotations designed to uplift and enlighten young readers.
1. Which book mentions a teenager’s super power?| A．The Unequal Twins. |
| B．Johnny Catching Fire. |
| C．Quotes from the Quiver. |
| D．How to Help Yourself to Be Who You Want to Be. |
| A．$28.99. | B．$36.98. |
| C．$43.99. | D．$7.98. |
| A．They are designed to inspire young readers. |
| B．They help readers to understand adulthood better. |
| C．They help kids recognize their strengths and weaknesses. |
| D．They provide quotations to uplift and enlighten people. |
10 . Like so many young bookish kids I wrote poems and stories and filled pages of journals with dreams. But even though I adored writing, I still knew that being a real-life writer was a dream both great and impossible.
At different times I harboured the possibility that it might work. When I was seventeen, I wrote a story that was published in a collection. At college, I entered local writing competitions and had success. A couple of times, I wanted to register for a creating writing degree offered by Harvard University, but each time, the fear of failure held me back. Then I understood the dream was indeed impossible and I gave up writing setting out on the path to become a teacher.
Years later, after my daughter was born and deep in the intense world of a newborn, I felt urged to scribble (草草写下) madly. Then, two years later, late at night as I fed my second daughter. I read a book written by one of my teachers and it lit me up. I was hungry to make a reader feel something as intensely as she had made me feel.
I got in touch with my old teacher and with her encouragement, I finally registered for a creative writing degree and got actively involved in the writing events. At a literary event, I listened to a panel of writers and publishers talk about the need to be brave and take chances. At the end of the event, I took one of those chances, handing my as-yet-unfinished manuscript (手稿) to one of the panelists, who told me to send her the first three chapters via e-mail.
Six months later, I had my first publishing contract and felt like I’d won the lottery (彩票). There are a thousand different paths to publication, most of them with some rocky patches before the thrilling moment you hold your book in your hands.
1. Why did the author quit the idea of being a writer?| A．She had applied for a degree. | B．She lacked sufficient courage. |
| C．she became known for a story. | D．She wished to make a teacher. |
| A．Realize the dream of being a writer. | B．Make readers interested in the book. |
| C．Tell us her feeling about the teacher. | D．Write about caring for young children. |
| A．A certificate in writing. | B．A talk with good friends. |
| C．A platform for manuscripts. | D．A chance of publishing a book. |
| A．My Path to Publication. | B．My Views on Dreams. |
| C．My Talents for Writing. | D．My Conversation with Panelists. |
