The Second Reading

C2 Proficiency · Open Cloze · Cambridge Ready original exercise

For questions 1–8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. There is an example at the beginning.

Some readers regard rereading (0) ___ a waste of time: with so many books still unread, why return to one whose ending you already know? Yet devoted rereaders insist that only when we are relieved (1) ___ the need to find out what happens are we at last free to concentrate (2) ___ how a story is told. Details that passed us (3) ___ the first time suddenly stand out, and characters we once dismissed turn out to be more interesting than we thought. Rereading is also, in a sense, a way of measuring ourselves. The book stays the same, but we do not, and a novel that left us cold as teenagers may, decades later, reduce us (4) ___ tears. Rereading has its critics, naturally. Life is short, they argue, and every hour spent on an old favourite is an hour taken away (5) ___ discovering something new. There is something to be said (6) ___ this view, but it rests (7) ___ the assumption that reading is chiefly a matter of novelty. Those who reread would reply that a great book, (8) ___ a good friend, rewards long acquaintance.

The Second Reading

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