Falling in love with reading

江苏泰州市姜堰区罗塘高级中学 钱爱琴

在漫长的一天结束时，阅读似乎已成为许多人的一种习惯，这种习惯是从什么时候开始的呢？

体裁记叙文文章词数 建议用时约440 8分钟

难词探意

1. ritual /'rɪtʃuəl/ n. 习惯

2. elf /elf/ n. 精灵

3. lull /lʌl/ n. 平静时期； 间歇

4. autonomy /ɔː'tɒnəmi/ n. 自主权

5. solidify /sə'lɪdɪfaɪ/ v. 变得稳固；使凝固

Reading is there for you at the end of a long day. It can make you laugh and cry. Sometimes it's a struggle and you have to work at it. But one thing all readers know is that it isn't a short period of enjoyment. But where did it start?

I owe my love of reading to two very different instances. The first is a memory of my childhood. I was on my bed with my brother and mom, and she was reading to us. We were young, maybe five and seven respectively, andritualswere important to our daily routines—and more specifically—important for getting us to shut up and go to bed. My mom was reading The Hobbit, and I was picturing fantastical images of food-hungry hobbits, mysticalelves, and journeys of good and evil. Of course, the book is technically considered a children's book, but I never would have been able to pick it up on my own,and my love for that story remains vivid as ever, even as the plot itself has faded.

Perhaps I was seeking that thrill of first love, but the following years showed alullin my reading. At school, I excelled in English,but I found myself coasting through the assigned reading and absorbing none of it. That changed in the eighth grade. I finished our spelling units for the semester earlier than expected, so my teacher called me up after class one day and told me that she wanted me to do supplemental work. “I want you to go over to the bookshelf and pick out any book you'd like to read, and write a report on it, which can be on any topic you'd like,” she said.

It was the first time in school that someone had given meautonomyto choose my own book. I took this very seriously. I stood in front of the extraordinary ceiling-high shelves for 20 minutes. I touched the different covers and thoughtfully read each book jacket. Finally, hesitantly, I picked up A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and placed it on my teacher's desk. She smiled and said, “You picked a good one.” She was right. I fell absolutely in love with Francie and the Nolan family. I related to her adolescence. I cried for her father—the first time a book caused me to do so. I was excited to go home and read. Once again, it became a ritual in my life. It was my second instance of falling in love with reading, and though it was a long path, the affair wassolidified.

Reading Check

1. What's the second paragraph mainly about?

A. A memory of the author's growth.

B. The author's family members.

C. One reason for the author's love of reading.

D. The relationship between the author's family members.

2. What does the underlined phrase “coasting through” in paragraph 3 mean?

A. Finishing something easily.

B. Wandering around a place.

C. Suffering from something.

D. Breaking away from some rules.

3. What made the author love reading again?

A. Encouragement from the author's mother.

B. A book from the author's teacher.

C. The author's excellence in English.

D. The unusual bookshelf of the author's teacher.