Unit 3
On Reading
Consolidation Activities
I. Text Comprehension
1. Decide which of the following best states the author's purpose.
A.To recommend some masterpieces for pleasurable reading.
B.To let the readers share his experience of reading.
C.To urge the exercise of personal taste in the selection of what to read from the books he is going to recommend.
Key: [ C ]
2. Judge, according to the text, whether the following statements are true or false.
1). If books can fulfill your utilitarian purposes, you will find reading them enjoyable. [F]
2). All masterpieces, due to their importance and value acknowledged by critics, should be given priority on readers’ booklists. [F]
3). The first criterion in book-selection is that the reader should get pleasure from his/her reading. [T]
4). Reading habits vary from person to person, depending on individuals’ preferences. [T]
5). The author does not believe in skipping, because he often worries that he may have missed something important and valuable in reading as a result of skipping. [F]
4. Explain in your own words the following sentences taken from the text.
1. Even though many scholars highly praise a book, you don’t have to read it at all if you don’t find it interesting.
2. Later on, when I finish my work, and I feel relaxed, and don’t want to beat my brains, I us
ually read history, essays, criticism or biography, and in the evening I read a novel.
II. Writing Strategies
1) Read the following sentences that are structured in an inverted sequence.
  a. Such books we read with resignation rather than with alacrity. (Paragraph 1)
  b. That, however, they cannot do unless you enjoy reading them. (Paragraph 1)
  c. Now of such books as this I mean to say nothing. (Paragraph 3)
  d. ... but how you are to learn it I cannot tell you ...(Paragraph 6)
Try to give the normal order of these sentences and comment on their stylistic functions.
a. Normal sequence: We read such books with resignation rather than with alacrity.
Function: To create a closer relation between “books” in this sentence and “them” in the preceding one.
b. Normal sequence: However, they cannot do that unless you enjoy reading them.
      Function: To achieve emphasis by putting “that” at the beginning of the sentence.
c. Normal sequence: Now I mean to say nothing of such books as this.
Function: Both to achieve emphasis and to create a closer relation between “this” in the sentence and what has been discussed in the preceding one.
d. Normal sequence: ... but I cannot tell you how you are to learn it ...
Function: Both to achieve emphasis and to create a closer relation between “it” in the sentence and “to know how to skip” in the preceding one.
2)  With the exception of Paragraphs 1 and 4, the author supplies his own experiences in the second half of each paragraph to shed more light on the suggestions he puts forward. Read these experiences again, and identify the author’s viewpoints.
The author’s viewpoints involved in his personal experiences:
a. The author’s experience in reading George Eliot’s Adam Bede (Paragraph 2) — to indicate that masterpieces do not necessarily bring enjoyment in reading.
b. Reading certain books makes the author feel the richer (Paragraph 3) — to suggest that what pleases one person does not necessarily please another.
c. The author’s reading habit (Paragraph 5) — to advise people that they need to read according to their own interests.
d. The author’s experience as a bad skipper (Paragraph 6) — to prove that reading could be more enjoyable, if you know how to skip.
III. Language Work
1. Explain the underlined part(s) in each sentence in your own words.
1). Such books we read with resignation rather than with alacrity.
  read with unresisting acceptance because we know we have to; eagerness
2). The books I shall mention in due course will help you neither to get a degree nor to earn your living.
  later, after these introductory remarks
3). I wish to deal only with the masterpieces which the consensus of opinion for a long time has accepted as supreme.
  for a long time have generally been accepted as the most important books
4). Don’t forget that critics often make mistakes — the history of criticism is full of the blunders the most eminent of them have made ...
  full of mistakes; famous and respected
5). ... I would not go so far as to pretend that to read a book will assuage the pangs of hunger or still the pain of unrequited love ...