Mini Book Excerpts (节选)

    Biography

    When Salinger learned that a car park was to be built on the land, the middle-aged writer was shocked and quickly bought the neighboring area to protect it… The townspeople never forgot the rescue and came to help their most famous neighbor.

    J. D. Salinger: A Life by Kenneth Slawenski (Random House, $ 27)

    Mystery

    “You're a smart boy. Benny's death was no accident, and you're the only one who saw it happen. Do you think the murderer should get away with it?” The boy was staring stubbornly at his lap again.

    A thought suddenly occurred to Annika, “Did you... You recognized the man in the car, didn't you?”

    The boy hesitated, twisting his fingers. “Maybe,” he said quietly.

    Red Wolf by Liza Marklund (Atria Books, $ 25.99)

    Short Stories

    She wants to say to him what she has learned, none of it in class. Some women are born stupid, and some women are too smart for their own good. Some women are born to give, and some women only know how to take. Some women learn who they want to be from their mothers, some who they don't want to be. Some mothers suffer so their daughters won't. Some mothers suffer so their daughters won't.

    You Are Free by Danzy Senna (Riverhead Books, $ 15)

    Humor

    Do your kids like to have fun? Come to Fun Times! Do you like to watch your kids having fun? Bring them to Fun Times! Fun Times's “amusement cycling” is the most fun you can have in the United States right now. Why spend thousands of dollars flying to Disney World when you can spend less than half to that within a day's drive in most cities?

    Happy And Other Bad Thoughts by Larry Doyle (Ecco, $ 14.99)

    When I told my father that I was moving to Des Moines, Iowa, he told me about the only time he had been there. It was in the 1930s, when he was an editor of the literary magazine of Southern Methodist University（SMU）in Dallas, Texas. He also worked as a professor at SMU, and there was a girl student in his class who suffered from a serious back disease. She couldn't afford the operation because her family was poor.

    Her mother ran a boardinghouse in Galveston, a seaside town near Houston, Texas. She was cleaning out the attic（阁楼）one day when she came across an old dusty manuscript（手稿）. On its top page were the words, “By O. Henry”. It was a nice story, and she sent it to her daughter at SMU, who showed it to my father. My father had never read the story before, but it sounded like O. Henry, and he knew that O. Henry had once lived in Houston. So it was possible that the famous author had gone to the beach and stayed in the Galveston boardinghouse, and had written the story there and left the manuscript behind by accident. My father visited an O. Henry expert at Columbia University in New York, whoauthenticatedthe story as O. Henry's.

My father then set out to sell it. Eventfully, he found himself in Des Moines, meeting with Gardner Cowles, a top editor at the Des Moines Register. Cowles loves the story and bought it on the spot. My father took the money to the girl. It was just enough for her to have the operation she so desperately needed.

My father never told me what the O. Henry story was about. But I doubt that it could have been better than his own story.

    It is quite apparent that competition surrounds every aspect of human life whether in the United States or the Amazon Rain Forest. Without it we would not have grown into primates(灵长类动物). Or we would probably still be struggling to sharpen a bronze tool while crawling around on four legs in search of meat. Without competition, Columbus wouldn't have discovered America and Edison would never have invented the light bulb.

    Friendship, like all relationship between two people, involves competition. It isn't competition in a traditional sense because there are no goals to be scored and no prize. Perhaps the ecological definition—the simultaneous (同时的)demand by two or more organisms for limited environmental resources, such as nutrients， living space, or light- better explain it.

    As in nature, high school life is governed by a set of laws, similar to a shortened version of Darwin's theory of evolution, overpopulation, and competition. There is an abundance of high school students and to distinguish them, ranking and categorizing(分类)take place. In high school, friendships learn to co-exist with competition even though at times the relationship is rough. In fact, in some circumstances, competition is too much of a burden for a friendship to bear, causing it to fall apart. College admission is the final high school objective. Four years of hard work is to achieve good grades, and a student's fate is determined not only by these achievements, but by the records of thousands of other seniors trying to achieve a similar recognition.

    Nevertheless, by necessity, competition between students exists in all aspects of high school life. It sets and improves the standards in everything from sports to school work. A healthy, friendly competition can have only benefits, but when it becomes too fierce, jealousy can tear friendships apart. Yet, despite all this, without competition, we would be lost.

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    Ever walked to the shops only to find, once there, you've completely forgotten what you went for? Or struggled to remember the name of an old friend? For years we've accepted that a forgetful brain is as much a part of aging as wrinkles and gray hair. But now a new book suggests that we've got it all wrong.

    According to The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain, by science writer Barbara Strauch, when it comes to the important things, our brains actually get better with age. In fact, she argues that some studies have found that our brain hits its peak between our 40s and 60s — much later than previously thought.

    Furthermore, rather than losing many brain cells as we age, we keep them, and even produce new ones well into middle age. For years it's been assumed that brain, much like the body, declines with age. But the longest, largest study into what happens to people as they age suggests otherwise.

    This continuing research has followed 6,000 people since 1956, testing them every seven years. It has found that on average, participants performed better on cognitive (认知的) tests in their 40s and 50s than they had done in their 20s. Specifically, older people did better on tests of vocabulary, verbal memory (how many words you can remember) and problem solving. Where they performed less well was number ability and perceptual speed — how fast you can push a button when ordered. However, with more complex tasks such as problem-solving and language, we are at our best at middle age and beyond. In short, researchers are now coming up with scientific proof that we do get wiser with age.

    Neuroscientists are also finding that we are happier with aging. A recent US study found older people were much better at controlling and balancing their emotions. It is thought that when we're younger we need to focus more on the negative aspects of life in order to learn about the possible dangers in the world, but as we get older we've learned our lessons and are aware that we have less time left in life: therefore, it becomes more important for us to be happy.

    Now, more than ever before, people are wondering what life is all about, and what it is for. Seeking material success is beginning to trouble large numbers of people around the world. They feel that the long-hours work culture to make more money to buy more things is eating up their lives, leaving them very little time or energy for family or pastimes. Many are turning to other ways of living and downshifting is one of them.

    Six percent of workers in Britain took the decision to downshift last year. One couple who downshifted is Daniel and Liz. They used to work in central London. He was a newspaper reporter and she used to work for an international bank. They would go to work by train every day from their large house in the suburbs, leaving their two children with a nanny(保姆). Most evenings Daniel wouldn't get home until eight or nine o'clock, and nearly twice a month he would have to fly to New York for meetings

    They both earned a large amount of money but began to feel that life was passing them by.

    Nowadays, they run a farm in the mountains of Wales, I always wanted to have a farm here, says Daniel, "and we took almost a year to make the decision to downshift. It's taken some getting used to, but it's been worth it. We have to think twice now about spending money in car repairs and we no longer have any holidays. However, I think it's made us stronger as a family, and the children are a lot happier."

    Liz, however, is not quite sure. "I used to enjoy my job, even though it was hard work and long hours. I'm not really a country girl, but I suppose I'm gradually getting used to looking after the animals. One thing I do like, though, is being able to see more of my children. My advice for other people wanting to do the same is not to think about it too much or you might not do it at all."