We recently asked subscribers of the BuzzFeed Books newsletter to tell us about a book that changed their lives. There's something here for everyone, so take your pick — and get ready to be inspired.
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
This is a book about the story of an unlikely friendship between Finch, who's fascinated with dying, and Violet, who's living for the future in the wake of her sister's death. Both have much to learn from each other. All the Bright Places really shows that, no matter what tragedy or hardship you may have faced, you eventually just have to get back out there and live your life. —Mikaila C.
Get it from Amazon for $7.99+, Barnes and Noble for $8.49, or a local bookseller through IndieBound.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
As an American-Nigerian, this book spoke to me on so many levels — from the simple joy of a text interspersed with the language of my parents, to the struggle of understanding race in terms of the world beyond America. I highly recommend it.—Chikodili Agwuna
Get it from Amazon for $10.99+, Barnes and Noble for $13.07, or a local bookseller through IndieBound.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Growing up without family to turn to during adolescence, I felt every pain and loneliness that the prince experienced. But The Little Prince taught me to make friends and value them by looking into their hearts — not just into what they projected in public. —Erika, Chicago
Get it from Amazon for $6.51+, Barnes and Noble for $7.51, or a local bookseller through IndieBound.'
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
This is the story of two Afghan women who find their lives connected forever. It taught me about the struggles of womanhood, as well as the power and strength of sisterhood, and proves that not all love stories have to be romantic. —Susan M.
Get it from Amazon for $5.43+, Barnes and Noble for $10.94, or a local bookseller through IndieBound.
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As a Hollywood film star in the 1930s and 1940s, Hedy Lamarr at one point was called "the most beautiful woman in the world." What she was less known for was her scientific intellect.
Lamarr had a natural curiosity about the world around her. As young as age 5, she would spend time taking apart and rebuilding her music box to understand how it worked. But her technical mind was overshadowed by her looks-at 16, she got her first film role and quickly became an international icon.
As her acting career continued to take off during World War II, Lamarr became restless, feeling that she should do more to contribute to the Allies' war efforts. Together with her friend Antheil, Lamarr came up with a groundbreaking new form of wireless communication known as spread spectrum (光谱).The concept was to create a wireless signal that could hop from frequency to frequency, making it impossible to track or jam. They received a patent for their technology in 1942, but the military refused to implement (实施) it in their war effort.
The technology sat unused for years, until one day the military revived it in the 1960s and the system "spread like wildfire. "It became the backbone of Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and a range of wireless communication mechanisms we rely on today. By the time the technology was implemented, Lamarr's patent had been due, and she never received a single payment for her revolutionary invention.
Hedy Lamarr played the role she was expected to play in Hollywood — a beautiful object to admire on the big screen. If she yielded to society's expectations in other ways, communication as we know it could look completely different today.
If your fingers get chilly all year round—even in the peak of summer—you're not alone. Many people get cold hands during all of the seasons, due to a number of causes, from genetic to chronic illnesses.
Common reasons include being elderly and thin. If your hands are regularly cold or numb, however, it's a good idea to see a doctor to rule out more serious causes. Cold hands are one of the symptoms of both anemia (贫血症) and hypothyroidism (甲状腺机能减退). Diabetes, which reduces blood circulation, can also trigger it. And if your heart is weak from heart disease, your body may prioritize sending blood to your core over your limbs.
For many others, cold hands are a sign they have a largely harmless condition called Raynaud's disease. When any of us goes out in the cold, our bodies activate the muscles in our smallest blood vessels to make them even smaller—a survival mechanism to keep blood, and thus warmer temperatures, in our core. For people with Raynaud's, this reaction is too strong, and instead of just a bit less blood going to their fingers, far too little gets there.
Raynaud's is more common in women, and it most often develops before the age of 30. In fact, if you develop Raynaud's when you're older—usually after 40—it can be a sign of another underlying issue. That could be a smaller problem—a previous incident of frostbite (冻伤) or a sign of a more serious autoimmune condition, like lupus (狼疮).
For the majority of people living with Raynaud's, medication won't be necessary. However, a rare, more severe form of Raynaud's affects less than one in 1,000 people. In these cases, blood can become completely blocked, causing sores on the hands. If they go untreated, it can lead to gangrene (坏疽) and, very rarely, amputation (截肢).
Why doesn't the Leaning Tower of Pisa fall over during its over 800 years history? To understand their situation, it's helpful to understand why the tower tilted in the first place.
In the 12th century, the wealthy maritime republic of Pisa set about turning its cathedral square into a magnificent landmark. In 1173, construction began on a free-standing bell tower. The engineers and architects of the time were masters of their craft but knew far less about the ground they stood on. Less than five years later, the tower's southern side was already underground. If workers added more weight, the pressure from upper stories would sink the structure and fatally increase the lean. But construction stopped at the fourth story for nearly a century, which allowed the soil to settle.
When construction began again in 1272, workers compensated for the tower's minor tilt by making the next few floors taller on the southern side. But the weight of the extra masonry made that side sink even deeper. By the time they completed the seventh floor and bell chamber, the angle of the tilt was 1.6 degrees.
In 1838, engineers dug a walkway around the base to examine the sunken foundation. But removing the supporting sand only worsened the tilt. In 1935, the Italian Corps of Engineers injected mortar to strengthen the base. However, the mortar wasn't evenly distributed throughout the foundation, resulting in another sudden drop and moving the tower closer to its tipping point.
With exact data and new computing technology, in 1992, the construction team drilled diagonal tunnels to remove 38 cubic meters of soil from under the tower's north end. Then, they temporarily counterbalanced the structure, with 600 tons of lead ingots before anchoring the base with steel cables. More than six centuries after its construction, the tower was finally straightened to a tilt of about four degrees.
Today the tower stands at 55– or 56– meters tall, and it should remain stable for at least 300 years as a monument to the beauty of imperfection.
4 sustainability tips for Earth Day
On this Earth Day, sea turtles are thriving on Florida beaches and the air in Los Angeles is cleaner than ever before. But these events are the result of the coronavirus pandemic, when there are fewer cars on the road, planes in the sky, and factories at full production. With most people at home, nature is prospering. Few believe these improvements will continue when people are able to head to the office again. .
Help the environment while eating healthier. . Using ingredients that have a much smaller environmental impact compared to using animal products. While you're in the kitchen, instead of throwing away your bits of onion, celery, and garlic, scoop up the scraps and try re-growing them for your own garden.
Time for spring recycling. A lot of people are using their extra time at home to remove their clothes they'll never wear again and birthday cards from a decade ago. Instead of throwing it all away, there are several companies and nonprofits that will accept these items, turning them into new products or recyclable materials. The Crayon Initiative takes discarded crayons, melts them down, and remanufactures them, with the new crayons then sent to children's hospitals. .
. Here's a smaller decision that can make a difference: When recycling a bottle, make sure you first take off the bottle cap and throw it in the trash. Also, when cafes are back open again, choose a reusable thermos or enjoy your drink in one of their mugs because paper to-go coffee cups are lined with a plastic film that can't be recycled.
Properly dispose of prescription drugs. In order to keep the no-longer- necessary prescription drugs away from kids or anyone else who shouldn't get into them, some people flush them down the toilet. . Most communities have a safe place to dispose of old and unused prescriptions, with pharmacies and hospitals often accepting the drugs.
A. Collect as more bottle caps as possible.
B. Throw away those bottle caps.
C. However, there are still a few things we can do for the planet.
D. It is a great way to deal with old and unused prescriptions.
E. This can change the water supply and affect water wildlife.
F. Lockdown is a good time to try more plant-based recipes.
G. Even old birthday, Christmas, and thank you cards can be made new again, thanks to St. Jude's Ranch for Children.
We are surrounded by stories of sadness, cruelty and violence. Evil arrests our1. But there are also many2stories of selfless goodness. They could3 go unnoticed, but such acts can also change lives forever.
My brothers and I 4 with a story of something that happened to my father, who5 seven years ago. It is a story of family tragedy and astonishing, quiet kindness. My father's father died when my father was 11. His mother was a widow at 34, and as an only child, he6 much of his grief alone. In accordance with traditional7, he began to walk very early to church each morning to say prayers in his father's8.
At the end of his first week, he9 that the ritual director of the synagogue, Mr. Einstein, walked past his home just as he left to walk to church. Mr. Einstein, 10 advanced in years explained, "Your home is on the way to the church. I thought it might be fun to have some11. That way, I don't have to walk alone." For a year my father and Mr. Einstein walked through the New England 12, the humidity of summer and the snow of winter. They talked about life and loss and, for a while, my father was not so13.
After my parents married and my oldest brother was born, my father14 Mr. Einstein, now well into his 90s, and asked if Mr. Einstein could meet his new wife and child. Mr. Einstein15, but said that in view of his age my father would have to come to him.
My father once wrote about what happened: "The journey was long and16. His home, by car, was 17 twenty minutes away. I drove in tears as I 18 what he had done. He had walked for an hour to my home so that I would not have to be alone each morning. … By the simplest of gestures, the19 of caring, he took a frightened child and he20 him with confidence and with faith back into life."
Laozi isphilosopher of ancient China. He is best known as the Author of Tao Te Ching, which led him to be traditionally considered the founder of Philosophical Taoism. He (respect) as a deity in most religious forms of Taoist philosophy, often refers to Laozi as Lord Lao. Tao Te Ching, often simply called Laozi after its famous author, describes the dao as the source and ideal of all (exist): It is invisible, but not mysterious, immensely powerful yet (extreme) modest, and is the root of all things. According to the book, humans have no special place within the dao, (be) just one of its many (ten thousand) manifestations (表现). People have desires and free will, and thus they are able to alter their own nature. Many, , act "unnaturally", upsetting the natural balance of the dao. The Tao Te Ching intends to lead (it) readers to a "return" to their natural state, to be in harmony dao.
As with most other ancient Chinese philosophers, Laozi often explained his ideas by ways of paradox, analogy, appropriation of ancient sayings, repetition, similarity, rhyme, and rhythm, which makes the writing difficult (understand) .
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：
1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2．只允许修改 10 处，多者（从第 11 处起）不计分。
I went to Mount Fanjing with my classmates two years ago. That impressed me was climbing the mountain.It was the late spring and it was a little cold in the mountain. The mountain was such steep that we could hardly climb to the top of the mountain. In the process of climbing, I was too tired to go on climbing. But when I saw other student trying their best to climb, I made up my mind to be the first one to climb to the top. Then I picked up a branch of a tree to support me. Unluckily, I slipped and fell down. At the critically moment, one classmate hold me so I did not fall off the mountain. Under their help, I finally climbed to the top of the mountain.
I was very exciting because it was the first time I had climbed a mountain. Meanwhile, I understood that we should help each other when we were in trouble. This trip came to an end soon, but it still encourages me overcome the difficulties I face.
