All the wisdom of the times, all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries, are easily and cheaply available to all of us in books, but we must know how to make use of this treasure. The unluckiest people in the world are those who have never discovered how satisfying it is to read good books.
I’m very interested in people and finding out about them. Some of the most amazing people I’ve met could only  be found in a writer’s imagination, then in his book, and then, again, in my imagination. I’ve found in books new friends and new worlds.
Reading is fun, not because the writer is telling you something, but because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works along with the writer’s or even goes beyond his. Your experience, compared with his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.
Every book stands by itself, like a one-family house, but books in a library are like houses in a city. Although they are separate(分開的), in some way they are connected with each other. The same ideas, or related(相關(guān)的) ones, appear in different places; the human problems that repeat themselves in life repeat themselves in books, but with different solutions(解決方法) according to different writings at different times. Books influence each other. They connect the past, the present and the future and have their own generations (age groups), like families. Wherever you start reading, you connect yourself with one of the families of ideas, and in the end, you not only find out about the world and the people in it, you find out about yourself, too.
Reading can only be fun if you expect it to be. If you concentrate on(專注于) books somebody tells you “ought” to read, you probably won’ t have fun. But if you put down a book you don’t like and try another till you find one that means something to you, and then relax with it, you will almost certainly have a good time — and if you become, as a result of reading, better, wiser, kinder, or more gentle, you won’t suffer during the process.
【小題1】Which of the following ideas may the writer of this article agree with?

Many years before the United States was founded(建立), Americans had already invented barbecues. But the first barbecues, in fact ,were the invention of the Taino Indians of Haiti, who dried their meat on raised frames(架子)of sticks over fires. Spanish explorers spelled the Taino word as barbacoa, and as time passed, English settlers along the Atlantic coat had their own barbecues.
One summer day in 1773, Benjamin Lynde, a citizen of Massachusetts, wrote in his diary, “Fair and hot ; Browne;hack overset.” That is , on a bright and hot day he went to the Brownes to attedn a barbecue, and his carriage(馬車)fell over. It shows that the barbecue had its social occasion by that time. Large animals would be roasted whole on frames over hot fires, and neighbours would be invited to dinner.
In later centuries, as settlers moved to the west, the barbecue went along with it, reaching an especially large size in Texas, where a pit (坑)for fuels(燃料) such as tree branches might be over ten feet deep. Today , the barbecue grills(燒烤架)which are fueled by charcoal(木炭) or electricity are likely to be small and easy to move , and can cook only parts of an animal at a time, but people still have barbecues out of doors and always invite their neighbours or friends over.
【小題1】Who invented the barbecues first in history?

Learning Chinese may seem difficult to foreigners outside China．  36  , Daisy Raffan, an   37  girl in Britain, hopes to bring the language to the young people．Daisy has   38  an online learning website(網(wǎng)站) to teach the language to as   39  people as possible all over the world．  40  China’s fast development in the world, Daisy thinks   41  important for people to learn the language sooner rather than later．Daisy has   42  Putonghua since the age of five．Two years ago, after she decided to pass on what she had learned, this teenager   43  the idea for the website, kids Chinese club．com．She said, “People are afraid to learn Putonghua．One of the main reasons is that they think it’s an   44  language to learn, but I have had fun   45  it．And I hope what have done is easy and fun．”Her   46  offers a series(系列)of lessons, which are videos of Daisy teaching a group of students on topics from greetings and numbers to Chinese culture．
Daisy’s website has   47  the support of several important persons—the teenager   48  she has received a letter praising(贊揚(yáng))her work from Gordon Brown, who is the British Prime Minister(首相)．
She said, “I wrote to him and told him what I was doing and got a letter   49 ．He said that what I was doing was a really good  50 ．I thought it was amazing．I was excited that someone so important was supporting what we’re doing．”