文档介绍：: .
Practice
a. It
Even then my only friends were made of paper smelled of old paper and dust and it was my
and ink. At school I had learned to read and write 35 sanctuary, my refuge. The bookseller would let me sit
long before the other children. Where my school on a chair in a corner and read any book I liked to
Line friends saw notches of ink on incomprehensible my heart’s content. He hardly ever allowed me to pay
5 pages, I saw light, streets, and people. Words and the for the books he placed in my hands, but when he
mystery of their hidden science fascinated me, and I wasn’t looking I’d leave the coins I’d managed to
saw in them a key with which I could unlock a 40 collect on the counter before I left. It was only small
boundless world, a safe haven from that home, those change—if I’d had to buy a book with that pittance, I
streets, and those troubled days in which even I would probably have been able to afford only a
10 could sense that only a limited fortune awaited me. booklet of cigarette papers. When it was time for me
My father didn’t like to see books in the house. to leave, I would do so dragging my feet, a weight on
There was something about them—apart from the 45 my soul. If it had been up to me, I would have stayed
letters he could not decipher—that offended him. there forever.
He used to tell me that as soon as I was ten he would One Christmas Sempere gave me the best gift I
15 send me off to work and that I’d better get rid of all have ever received. It was an old volume, read and
my scatterbrained ideas if I didn’t want to end up a experienced to the full.
loser, a nobody. I used to hide my books under the 50 “Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens,” I read
mattress and wait for him to go out or fall asleep so on the cover.
that I could read. On