D

  　　Award­winning author Emma Donoghue's latest book, Room, is a unique and amazing story about a boy's experience living in a small，windowless room with his mother. The 11' x 11' space between the walls of the room is actually all the boy knows because he was born there and has never left. Room will horrify ，surprise, sadden, and finally delight you. Attracted from the start, readers of all sorts won't want to put Room down.

◆First published in the U. S. in September 2010

◆Publisher: Little Brown

◆321 Pages                                                                                                                                     

　　Literary master Ian McEwan returns with Solar, a novel about a Nobel prize­winning physicist. The physicist's personal life is in a mess as his fifth marriage breaks，but this time he actually loves his wife and wants to make things better. Solar is a funny story, completely unusual and as good as anything the writer has ever written.

◆Published in March 2010

◆Publisher: Knopf Doubleday

◆304 Pages                                                                                                                                     

　　One Day by David Nicholls was an international bestseller before it was released in the U. S. in June. Although it is well written and funny at times, don't be fooled—this isn't a good­feeling romantic comedy. If you decide to read it, be prepared for some heavy moments.

◆Published in the U．S. in June 2010

◆Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries

◆437 Pages                                                                                                                                     

　　Fall of Giants by Ken Follett is the first book in a new trilogy (three books)that will take readers through the major events of the twentieth century by following five families. In Fall of Giants, most of the action centers on World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. Although Fall of Giants is more than 1,000 pages and has many characters，the story is remarkably connected.

◆Published in September 2010

◆Publisher: Dutton

◆1,008 Pages                                                                                                                                  

1.Which of the following is NOT true according to the text?

A. Ian McEwan once won the Nobel Prize.

B. Fall of Giants is mostly set in wars.

C. One day is written by David Nicholls.

D. Solar is a funny story about a physicist.

2.We can know from the text that ________.

A. the main character of Room has a wide range of knowledge

B. Solar is the only book that Ian McEwan has ever written

C. all the four books were not published in the same month

D. One Day is a funny romantic comedy that sells very well

3.We can infer from the passage that ________.

A. the sixth of Ian McEwan's marriages broke

B. Room by Emma Donoghue has a happy ending

C. the publisher of One Day is Little Brown

D. Dutton and Ken Follett are both publishers

 

Nineteenth-century writers in the United States, whether they wrote novels, short stories, poems or plays, were powerfully drawn to the railroad in its golden years. In fact, writers responded to the railroads as soon as the first were built in the 1830’s. By the 1850’s, the railroad was a major presence in the life of the nation. Writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David saw the railroad both as a boon(要求) to democracy(民主国家) and as an object of suspicion. The railroad could be and was a despoiler(掠夺者) of nature, furthermore, in its manifestation of speed and noise. It might be a despoiler of human nature as well. By the 1850’s and 1860’s, there was a great distrust among writer and intellectuals of the rapid industrialization of which the railroad was a leading force. Deeply philosophical historians such as Henry Adams lamented the role that the new frenzy for business was playing in eroding traditional values. A distrust of industry and business continued among writers throughout the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.

　 For the most part, the literature in which the railroad plays and important role belong to popular culture rather than to the realm of serious art. One thinks of melodramas, boys’ books, thrillers, romances, and the like rather than novels of the first rank. In the railroads’ prime years, between 1890 and 1920, there were a few individuals in the United States, most of them with solid railroading experience behind them, who made a profession of writing about railroading—works offering the ambience of stations, yards, and locomotive cabs. These writers, who can genuinely be said to have created a genre, the “railroad novel”, are now mostly forgotten, their names having faded from memory. But anyone who takes the time to consult their fertile writings will still find a treasure trove of information about the place of the railroad in the life of the United States.

The underlined word “it” in the passage refers to______.

　　A. railroad 　　B. manifestation　　 C. speed 　　D. nature

In the first paragraph, the author implies that writers’ reactions to the development of railroads were______.

　　A. highly enthusiastic 　 B. both positive and negative　  C. unchanging　 　D. Disinterested

According to the passage, the railroad played a significant role in literature in all of the following kinds of books except_______.　

A. thrillers 　 B. boys’ books　　C. romances　　D. important novels

The phrase “first rank” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to______.

A. largest category(类别) 　B. highest quality　  C. earliest writers 　D. most difficult language

Which of the following topics is the main idea of passage?

A. The role of the railroad in the economy of the USA　

B. Major nineteenth century writers

C. The conflict between expanding industry and preserving nature

D. The railroad as a subject for literature

Franz Kafka wrote that “a book must be the ax (斧子) for the frozen sea inside us. ”I once shared this sentence with a class of seventh graders, and it didn’t seem to require any explanation.

We’d just finished John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. “Are you crying?” one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. “I am,” I told her, “and the funny thing is I’ve read it many times.”

But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I’ve taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel’s terrible logic—the giving way of dreams to fate (命运).

For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school—one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan’s upper classes—into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional “cultural capital” could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph. Ds.

Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn’t always read from the expected point of view.   About The Red Pony, one student said, “it’s about being a man, it’s about manliness.”I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (独白) read as raps (说唱), but both made sense; The interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck’s writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that “all these people hate each other, and they’re all white.” His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year, former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.

Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch (碰撞) but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich (充实) the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do not amaze but confuse. We may succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach them that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.

1.The underlined words in Paragraph 1 probably mean that a book helps to __________.

A．realize our dreams                      B．give support to our life

C．smooth away difficulties                  D．awake our emotions

2.Why were the students able to understand the novel Of Mice and Men?

A．Because they spent much time reading it.

B．Because they had read the novel before.

C．Because they came from a public school.

D．Because they had similar life experiences.

3.The girl left the selective high school possibly because__________.

A．she was a literary-minded girl              B．her parents were immigrants

C．she couldn’t fit in with her class           D．her father was then in prison

4.To the author’s surprise, the students read the novels__________.

A．creatively         B．passively          C．repeatedly        D．carelessly

5.The author writes the passage mainly to__________.

A．introduce classic works of literature

B．advocate(倡导) teaching literature to touch the heart

C．argue for equality among high school students

D．defend the current testing system

 

Ms Tan，you've referred to your new novel as your eighth book.

That's because it took me six or seven attempts at a second novel before I started and completed this one.

●Why do you think you had so many false starts?

I would say that my reasons were wrong：I was trying to prove that I wasn't just a mother-daughter storyteller，or I was trying to prove that I didn't just have to write about things that were strictly Chinese or Chinese-American.Those were never the right reasons for writing those early stories.And I could never come up with other，better reasons for continuing them.

●What kept you going on this book?

This book was different because it was based on my mother's real life.The reason for writing it became more personal and emotional.After The Joy Luck Club came out，my mother was always explaining to people that she wasn't any of the mothers in that book.And at one point she said to me，“Next book tells my true story.”And then she started telling me things I never knew before.She also told me many，many stories，because my mother doesn't generalize.The book really grew out of that.

●Have you ever visited China?

Yes.I've been there twice：about three years ago and then again last November，both times with my mother and my husband.

●Was it difficult to capture the Chinese-American dialect without sounding like a parody(拙劣的模仿)?

No，because it's the language I've heard all my life from my mother.She speaks English as it's direct translation from Chinese.But it's more than that：Her language also has more imagery than English.

●Can you think of an example?

Somebody might say to me，“Don't work so hard.You'll kill yourself.”My mother will say to me，“Why do you press all your brains out on this page for someone else？”So it's very vivid.That's the way she talks.

●Have many readers told you that the Chinese mother in your book reminded them of the typical Jewish(有癖好的)mother?

Many people have told me that.I think the mother-daughter relationship is very intense in both cases.Culturally there is an acceptance that mothers have the power to tell their children，especially their daughters，how to conduct their lives—not simply up until the time they are 18，but for the rest of their lives.However，when children grow up in a different culture from their parents'，they tend to keep more secrets from their parents.The children think，“They just wouldn't understand that I had to do this.”And that can really create a gap，and it can grow as the number of secrets grows.

1．Based on the questions in this interview，what do you think Ms Tan's profession is?

A．A journalist.　　　　　　     B．A storywriter.

C．An interviewer.                    D．An interviewee.

2．What's TRUE about Tan's second book?

A．It's about her real life in America.

B．The name of the book is The Joy Luck Club.

C．It is the result of many times of careful thought.

D．It includes many works of her mother.

3．Which question is NOT answered in the interview?

A．How does she think of her mother's language?

B．How many books does she plan to write?

C．When did she visit China?

D．How is generation gap created?

4．The last paragraph mainly talks about ________.

A．how to keep secrets from parents

B．how to deal with the mother-daughter relationship

C．how to conduct the lives

D．how the generation gap comes about

Bestsellers for last week

A Special Relationship

This novel is about a woman whose entire life is turned upside down in a very foreign place despite the fact that people there speak her language. Sally Good child is a 37-year-old American who, after nearly two decades as a highly independent journalist, finds herself pregnant and in London. She married an English foreign correspondent, Tony Thompson, whom she met while they were both on assignment in Cairo. From the beginning, Sally’s relationship with both Tony and London is an uneasy one: She finds her husband and his city to be far more foreign than imagined. But her adjustment problems soon turn into a nightmare(噩梦). She discovers that everything can be taken down and used against you, especially by a spouse (配偶) who now considers you an unfit mother and wants to prevent you from ever seeing your child again.

Born in 1955, Douglas Kennedy is the bestselling author of romances such as “The Big Picture”. He is also the author of several praised travel books.

White Hot

   Sayre Lynch decided never to return to her hometown Destiny, after she changed her last name and finally escaped from the influence of her controlling father, Huff Hoyle, who owns the iron foundry that the town is built around.

         But when Danny, her younger brother, is found dead with a shotgun in his mouth, Sayre unwillingly goes back for his funeral and is annoyed when her father’s handsome lawyer, Beck Merchant, tries to please her.

         When the young officer investigating(调查) the case notes that some of the evidence points to murder rather than suicide(自杀), Sayre finds herself unable to leave Destiny. She’s annoyed by Beck’s constant presence, and she is not sure if he’s trying to help or throw her off the trail. Nor does she trust her father or her older brother, Chris, who is as prime suspect in Danny’s murder.

         As she tries to figure out how the handsome, charming Beck fits into the picture, she finds herself deeply attracted to him.]

         Sandra Brown is the author of 51 New York Times top-five bestsellers. She began her writing career in 1981 and has since published 65 novels.

1.From the brief introduction of “A Special Relationship” we can imagine _____.

         A. Sally and Tony’s marriage is pleasant.             B. Sally and Tony may break up.

         C. Sally and Tony often quarrel about their jobs.   D. Sally is hard to get on with.

2.The story of Sally and Tony mainly happens in _____.

         A. America      B. London       C. Cairo          D. Cairo & London

3.It can be learned from the passage that______.

    A. Chris killed Danny.                       B. Lynch is Sayre’s real family name.

    C. Huff Hoyle knows who killed Danny.          D. Sayre fell in love with Beck.

4.In the introduction of White Hot, the underlined phrase suggests_____.

    A. Sayre thinks Beck has something to do with Danny’s death.

    B. Sayre thinks Beck is the right person she wants to marry.

    C. Sayre likes the handsome Beck in the picture.

D. Sayre doesn’t know whether Beck likes her.