Reading Inventory 1245

Brooklyn is one of the five boroughs that make up the City of New York. Because it is so large and heavily populated, if Brooklyn had been a city, it would have been the fourth-largest city in America. But Brooklyn was divided up into neighborhoods—with names like Flatbush and Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge—that gave the people living in these areas the feeling that they were living in a small town.

Brooklyn is large, yet also _____ .

• Affordable

• Dependent

• Intimate

• Safe

The door of the hotel opened and an ancient bewhiskered porter appeared and stood staring glassily at the turmoil in the street. The difficulties of getting Roger out of the cab and into the hotel were considerable, for he was a heavy dog, and it took the combined efforts of the family to lift, carry, and restrain him. Larry had by now forgotten his majestic pose and was rather enjoying himself. He leapt down and danced about the pavement with the whip, cleaving a path through the dogs, along which Leslie, Margo, Mother, and I hurried, bearing the struggling, snarling Roger. We staggered into the hall, and the porter slammed the front door and leant against it, his moustache quivering. The manager came forward, eyeing us with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. Mother faced him, hat on one side of her head, clutching in one hand my jam-jar of caterpillars.

We caused a(n) _____ .

• Investigation

• Commotion

• Accident

• Celebration

I lived alone here for a long time without any friend or acquaintance. In the course of my wanderings by night and day, at all hours and seasons, in city streets and quiet country parts, I came to be familiar with certain faces, and to take it to heart as quite a heavy disappointment if they failed to present themselves each at its accustomed spot. But these were the only friends I knew, and beyond them I had none.

I was _____ .

• Isolated

• Feeble

• Aggressive

• Amiable

Louis had learned to read—to "cut the book," as musicians say—but it was his ability to improvise marvelous melodic phrases which made him stand out, and made everyone else in the band play better. On fast numbers, no band could help but swing with Armstrong's horn driving it forward. Where other horn players slurred or half-tongued, Armstrong hit every note with a clean, sharp front edge. On long-held notes, he would deliberately start slightly flat and pull up to true pitch the way folk singers did, creating great tension and emotion. He played high notes with more smoothness and clarity than any horn player had ever achieved. As one critic observed, "Armstrong brought high register playing into jazz."

Louis was a(n) _____ horn player.

• Arrogant

• Accomplished

• Inexperienced

• Lousy

I must confess to a feeling of awe as we entered the rotunda of the great building. Pieces of massive furniture of another day still stood where man had placed them centuries ago. They were littered with dust and broken stone and plaster, but, otherwise, so perfect was their preservation I could hardly believe that two centuries had rolled by since human eyes were last set upon them.

The furniture was _____ .

• Fascinating

• Contemporary

• Fashionable

• Spotless

Coach took me aside, had me execute a triple jump with a running start in the grass. At the end of it I fell flat on my back on the hard ground, but I'd gone far, and was astonished at the natural combination of rhythm and power my legs had just shown me. I came back grinning foolishly, and Coach just nodded once in his curt, ant-headed way and said, "Well, Roger, we're a triple jumper." And he spent the next three years feeling vaguely infuriated by my inexplicable talent and utterly lackadaisical training regimens.

Roger was _____ .

• Inert

• Scholarly

• Phenomenal

• Confrontational

By mid-1864, demands for a negotiated end to the war were growing louder and louder. The Democrats, who nominated Lincoln's former general, George McClellan, as their presidential candidate, adopted a peace platform at their convention in Chicago in August, and this was widely hailed by scores of Northerners. In the Republican Party, some felt Lincoln's plans to readmit the Southern states to the Union (called Reconstruction) were too lenient; others thought his methods too severe.

The parties possessed _____ opinions.

• Divergent

• Dubious

• Syndicated

• Bizarre

Shea climbed slowly to his feet and stretched leisurely, taking time to locate his pack. He bent down and rummaged through its contents until he located the pouch containing the Elfstones, reassuring himself that they were still safely within his possession. Then picking up the pack, he trudged over to his sleeping brother and gently shook him. Flick stirred grudgingly, clearly unhappy that anyone would disturb his slumber. Shea was forced to shake him several times before he at last reluctantly opened his eyes and squinted up sourly. Upon seeing Shea, he raised himself to a sitting position and looked slowly about.

Shea _____ his brother.

• Hindered

• Coerced

• Mesmerized

• Censured

The City of New York is located on the northeast coast of the United States where the broad Hudson River flows into a large bay connected with the Atlantic Ocean. A natural site for a great urban center, New York has one of the finest harbors in the world: it is deep enough for large vessels, protected from storms, and ice free all winter. The city lies midway between the intensively developed and heavily populated New England and Delaware-Chesapeake Bay regions. New York City is thus the geographic center of "Megalopolis," the urbanized corridor between Portsmouth, N.H., and Portsmouth, VA, that contains more than 50 million people.

New York's harbor is ideally _____ .

• Duplicated

• Annexed

• Situated

• Financed

His pace quickened and he was in them in moments, scattering the birds, grabbing branches, stripping them to fill his mouth with berries. He almost spit them out. It wasn't that they were bitter so much as that they lacked any sweetness, had a tart flavor that left his mouth dry feeling. And they were like cherries in that they had large pits, which made them hard to chew. But there was such a hunger on him, such an emptiness, that he could not stop and kept stripping branches and eating berries by the handful, grabbing and jamming them into his mouth and swallowing them pits and all.

He was _____ .

• Alone

• Desperate

• Tired

• Uneasy