阅读理解 The number of Americans who read books has been declining for thirty years, and those who do read have become proud of, even a bit over-identified with, the enterprise. Alongside the tote bags you can find T-shirts, magnets, and buttons printed or sewn with covers of classic novels; the Web site Etsy sells tights printed with poems by Emily Dickinson. A spread in The Paris Review featured literature-inspired paint-chip colors. The merchandising of reading has a curiously undifferentiated flavor, as if what you read mattered less than that you read. In this climate of embattled bibliophilia, a new subgenre of books about books has emerged, a mix of literary criticism, autobiography, self-help, and immersion journalism: authors undertake reading stunts to prove that reading—anything— still matters.
"I thought of my adventure as Off-Road or Extreme Reading, " Phyllis Rose writes in "The Shelf: From LEQ to LES, " the latest stunt book, in which she reads through a more or less random shelf of library books. She compares her voyage, to Ernest Shackleton's explorations in the Antarctic. "However, I like to sleep under a quilt with my head on a goose down pillow, " she writes. "So I would read my way into the unknown—into the pathless wastes, into thin air, with no reviews, no best-seller lists, no college curricula, no National Book Awards or Pulitzer Prizes, no ads, no publicity, not even word of mouth to guide me."
She is not the first writer to set off on armchair expedition. A. J. Jacobs, a self-described "human guinea pig, " spent a year reading the encyclopedia for "The Know-It-Ail: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World" (2004). Ammon Shea read all of the Oxford English Dictionary for his book "Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21, 730 Pages" (2008). In "The Whole Five Feet" (2010), Christopher Beha made his way through the Harvard Classics during a year in which he suffered serious illness and had a death in the family. In "Howard's End Is on the Landing" (2010), Susan Hill limited herself to reading only the books that she already owned. Such "extreme reading" requires special personal traits: perseverance, stamina, a craving for self-improvement, and obstinacy.
Rose fits the bill. A retired English professor, she is the author of popular biographies of Virginia Woolf and Josephine Baker, as well as "The Year of Reading Proust" (1997), a memoir of her family life and the manners and mores of the Key West literary scene. Her best book is "Parallel Lives" (1983), a group biography of five Victorian marriages. (It is filled with marvellous details and set pieces, like the one in which John Ruskin, reared on hairless sculptures of female nudes, defers consummating his marriage to Effie Gray for so long that she sues for divorce.) Rose is consistently generous, knowledgeable, and chatty, with a knock for connecting specific incidents to large social trends. Unlike many biblio-memoirists, she loves network television and is un-nostalgic about print; in "The Shelf she says that she prefers her e-reader to certain moldy paperbacks.
The way most of us choose our reading today is simple. Someone posts a link, and we click on it. We set out to buy one book, and Amazon suggests that we might like another. Friends and retailers know our preferences, and urge recommendations on us. The bookstore and the library could assist you, too—the people who work there may even know you and track your habits—but they are organized in an impersonal way. Shelves and open stacks offer not only immediate access to books but strange juxtapositions. Arbitrary classification breeds surprises—Nikolai Gogol next to William Golding, Clarice Lispector next to Penelope Lively. The alphabet has no rationale, agenda, or preference.
单选题 What can be inferred from Paragraph 1 about the author's opinion on reading?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】推断题。由第一段中的“The merchandising of reading has a curiously undifferentiated flavor，as if what you read mattered less than that you read．”以及“reading--anything--still matter”可知，作者认为读书行为的商品化使得人们所读的具体内容好像不如读书这一行为重要，但是所读的内容也是重要的。由此能够推断出作者认为阅读作为一项严肃的活动不应该被商品化。故本题选D。
单选题 Why does Phyllis Rose compare her reading to Ernest Shackleton's explorations in the Antarctic?
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】推断题。由第二段中的“she reads through a more or less random shelf of library books”“So I would read my way into the unknown--into the pathless wastes…not even word of mouth to guide me”可知，Phyllis Rose把她的阅读比作Ernest Shackleton在南极探险是因为她的阅读行为是随心所欲的，没有任何参考或引导。故本题选C。
单选题 Which of the following is closest in meaning to underlined phrase "human guinea pig" in Paragraph 3?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】含义题。根据第三段中的“A．J．Jacobs，a self-described‘human guinea pig，’spent a year reading the encyclopedia”“Such‘extreme reading’requires special personal traits…”可知A．J．Jacobs只用了一年时间就读了一部百科全书，这是一种极限阅读。由此可推断出A．J．Jacobs认为自己是“实验者”。guinea pig本意为“豚鼠，实验对象”。故本题选A。
单选题 Why is Rose considered a good instance to manifest "extreme reading" ?
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】细节题。第三段最后和第四段开头提到“Such‘extreme reading’requires special personal traits：perseverance，stamina，a craving for self-improvement，and obstinacy．”“Rose fits the bill．”，由此可知Rose能够成为极限阅读的优秀例子是因为她具备极限阅读所需的个人特质。
单选题 In what sense is the arbitrary classification of books considered to be impersonal?
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】细节题。根据题干定位到最后一段。该段提到“Shelves and open stacks offer not only immediate access to books but strange juxtapositions．Arbitrary classification breeds surprise．．．The alphabet has no rationale，agenda，or preference．”，由此可知书本按照字母顺序摆放毫无道理可言，并列的两本书可能毫无关联，这会让读者措手不及。故本题选A。