Don't handle the vase as if it ________made of steel.

Not until he retired from teaching three years ago       having a holiday abroad.

Nothing is so easy as ________ parents to raise their expectations of their children too high.

When you are done with the book, just give it to Lucy or Helen or __________.

When deeply absorbed in work, ________ he often was, he would forget all about eating or sleeping.

It is by no means clear      the president can do to end the strike.

You are working too hard. You'd better keep a ________ between work and relaxation.

— Can you lend me the book Gone with the Wind?

— Sorry. I returned it to the library just now. Maybe it is still ____.

If you asked high school girls to name their favorite sports, most would probably say basketball or volleyball. I happen to be one of the few girls who would 　36　:surfing. But isn’t that a boy thing? Some people 　37　.Most certainly not.?

I started surfing about five years ago and　38　in love with the sport on the very first day. Riding that first 　39　 was the best feeling I had ever experienced.?

When I try to 　40　 surfing with other things, I find it very difficult because, in my ___41_　,there’s nothing like it. It involves body,　42　,and soul. There’s sand between my toes and cool, salt water all 　43　 us. The feeling I get when I’m surfing across that 　44　,becoming one with the 　45　,is like I’m weightless.?

The one thing I can 　46　 from surfing and not any other sport is endless challenge. You can never be the “best surfer” because the ocean 　47　 an uncountable variety of waves that nobody can ever master. The variations of surfing styles are wonderful. Some surfers are free and flowing; others are very aggressive and 　48　.All of these things attract me to surfing and make it ?　49　 ? from any other sport.?

I’ve 　50　 to tell every girl I know to do something that people don’t think girls can do. It’s part of being human to advance to new 　51　,so shouldn’t it be expected that girls should step up and start 　52　 the limits of things boys and men used to dominate??

There’re women 　53　 side by side with the President of our country, so why not side by side with the boys 　54　 the football team or out in the water surfing? Give girls a chance to __55　, and they will.?

I left university with a good degree in English Literature, but no sense of what I wanted to do. Over the next six years, I was treading water, just trying to earn an income. I tried journalism, but I didn’t think I was any good, then finance, which I hated. Finally, I got a job as a rights assistant at a famous publisher. I loved working with books, although the job that I did was dull.

I had enough savings to take a year off work, and I decided to try to satisfy a deep-down wish to write a novel. Attending a Novel Writing MA course gave me the structure I needed to write my first 55,000 words.

It takes confidence to make a new start — there’s a dark period in-between where you’re neither one thing nor the other. You’re out for dinner and people ask what you do, and you’re too ashamed to say, “Well, I’m writing a novel, but I’m not quite sure if I’m going to get there.” My confidence dived. Believing my novel could not be published, I put it aside.

Then I met an agent（代理商）who said I should send my novel out to agents. So, I did and, to my surprise, got some wonderful feedback. I felt a little hope that I might actually become a published writer and, after signing with an agent, I finished the second half of the novel.

The next problem was finding a publisher. After two-and-a-half years of no income, just waiting and wondering, a publisher offered me a book deal—that publisher turned out to be the one I once worked for.

It feels like an unbelievable stroke of luck—of fate, really. When you set out to do something different, there’s no end in sight, so to find myself in a position where I now have my own name on a contract（合同）of the publisher — to be a published writer — is unbelievably rewarding（有回报的）.

1.What does the underlined part in Paragraph 1 mean?

2.The author decided to write a novel ______ .

3.How did the writer feel halfway with the novel?

4.What does the author mainly want to tell readers in the last paragraph?