Vocabulary Practice

1. Write in transcription and read the following words and phrases:

an assistant; ancient classics; ten cent series; a customer; a fashionably dressed woman; a huge pile of books; an extremely powerful thing; numerous; rather expensive; in a tone of enthusiasm; illustration; actual photographs; anxiously; humorous; curiosity; frankly speaking; in amazement.

2. Translate into English:

Другими словами; презирать кого-либо; что-то вроде рекламы; методы современного менеджера; я уверяю вас; книга хорошо продаётся; стойка; лениво переворачивать страницы; шедевр; новое в художественной литературе; читать вслух; вдова; с легким сомнением; его лицо почти расплылось в улыбке; честно говоря; совершенная чушь; глубоко удивлённый; не будут ли они разочарованы?; в любом случае; ни в коем случае.

3. Reproduce the situations from the text where the active vocabulary is used. Think of your own sentences with the words from the list.

1. Suggest words and word combinations from active vocabulary for the following:

• to refuse to consider (a subject or idea) seriously

• to stay near without doing anything

• to form a judgment at once

• to be cheated in a regular buyer

• to make nuisance of oneself

• to read a book with great animation

• to trace sth

• to have (no) purpose of doing sth

• to restrain the desire to know sth

• without overstatement

• modern ways

• to make sb believe

• to form an opinion about sth

• to come one after another

• to cause a state of excited interest by all means

• to be sold successfully

5. Choose the correct statement:

1. In other words, he had guessed at a glance that…

1. I was a professor

2. The woman was a widow

3. The book was interesting

2. The manager of the biggest book store …

1. can sell any book

2. can attract any customer

3. cannot be deceived in a customer

3. He despised me, but a professor standing in a corner buried in a book looks …

1. very natural in a store

2. very unusual in a disco bar

3. well in a store

4. As he spoke he pointed to a huge pile of books on the counter with the title in big letters …

1. The Blue Moon

2. Golden Dreams

3. My First Date

5. His air was that of …

1. a baker who is offered a loaf of his own bread

2. a milkman, who is offered a glass of his own milk

3. a brewer who is offered a glass of his own beer

1. Answer the following questions:

1. Who is the main character of the story?

2. What did he do?

3. What was the manager’s attitude to the old professor?

4. Who were the real customers of this book store?

5. What kind of fiction were they interested in?

6. How did the manager sell the same book to quite different customers?

7. What opinion did the manager have of all his real customers?

1. Topics for general discussion

1. What kind of history is it?

2. What do you think of the manager?

3. Do you approve his “up-to-date” methods?

4. Do you need advice when you choose a book at a bookseller’s?

Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning DBE (13 May 1907–19 April 1989) was a famous British author of plays, novels and short stories. Daphne du Maurier was born in London (although she spent most of her life in her beloved Cornwall), the second of three daughters of the famous actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont. These connections gave her a head start in her literary career.

As a young child she was introduced to many of the brightest stars of the theatre thanks to the celebrity of her father.

She married Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick "Boy" Browning and had two daughters and a son. Biographers have drawn attention to the fact that du Maurier could be aloof and distant to her children. However, as a product of well-to-do Edwardian society in which the nanny dealt with the children, this is hardly surprising.

Indeed, she has often been painted as a frostily private recluse who rarely mixed in society or gave interviews.

Her husband died in 1965 and soon after Daphne moved to Kilmarth which became the setting for The House on the Strand.

Many of her works were adapted into films, such as one of her most famous books, Rebecca, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1940 for director Alfred Hitchcock, who would later bring her short story, The Birds, onto the big screen.