coming down from the moon and peculiar creatures emerging from the roof. That mix of the familiar and the extraordinary informs all my writing.

The Histories

By Herodotus

　　By the time I was 12, I was obsessed by Ancient Greece and Rome. At first, I found the early section of The Histories a real grind because it's like a long shaggy dog story that never gets to the point.

　　In the second half I was rewarded with the stories I'd been waiting for, like the battles of Marathon, Salamis and Thermopylae. Over the years, I come to value the infectious curiosity of the first half and the portrait of the world in the fifth century BC seen through the eyes of this extraordinary Greek historian.

A Distant Mirror

By Barbara W. Tuchman

　　Tuchman's book The Guns of August won the Pulitzer Prize, but it's this slightly less well-known work that provided me with a role model for my own writing. Both scholarly and interesting, it's a portrait of the 14th century in Western Europe and vividly evokes medieval civilization buffeted by cataclysms:the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt and the Great Papal Schism. I felt I knew what it was to die of the plague or to have a sword put through me-real stories told remarkably.

1.Tom Holland now finds the first half of The Histories 　　　.

　　A.off the point B.culture-centered

　　C.really boring D.quite entertaining

2.Which book does Tom Holland appreciate and try to copy its style?

　　A.The Histories. B.A Distant Mirror.

　　C.The Guns of August. D.Moominsummer Madness.

Most of us are already aware of the direct effect we have on our friends and family. But we rarely consider that everything we think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond the people we know. Conversely (相反地), our friends and family serve as conduits (渠道) for us to be influenced by hundreds or even thousands of other people. In a kind of social chain reaction, we