All the wisdom of the ages, all the stories that have delighted mankind for centuries, are

easily and cheaply 【21】______ to all of us 【22】______ the covers of books -- but we must know how to avail ourselves 【23】______ this treasure and how to get 【24】______ from it. The most 【25】______ people all over the world, are 【26】______ who have never discovered how 【27】______ it is to read good books.

I am very interested in people, in meeting them and 【28】______ about them. Some of the most 【29】______ people I've met existed only in a Writer's imagination, then 【30】______ the pages of his book, and then, again, in my imagination. I've found in books new friends, new societies, new words.

If I am interested in people, others are interested not so much in who 【31】______ in how. Who in the books includes everybody from science-fiction superman two hundred centuries in the future all the way back to the first 【32】______ in history; how 【33】______ everything from the ingenious explanations of Sherlock Holmes 【34】______ the discoveries of science and ways of teaching manners to children.

Reading can make our minds feel pleased, 【35】______ means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness 【36】______ you a good reader. Reading is 【37】______ , not because the writer is telling you something, 【38】______ because it makes your mind work. Your own imagination works together with the 【39】______ or even goes beyond his. Your experience, 【40】______ his, brings you to the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.

【21】

A．useful

B．new

C．readable

D．available