Londoners are great readers. They buy vast numbers of newspapers and magazines and even of books—especially paperbacks, which are still 1 cheap in spite of ever-increasing rises in the cost of printing. They still buy "proper" books, too, printed on good paper and 2 between hard covers.
There are many streets in London containing shops which specialize in book-selling. Perhaps the best known of these is Chafing Cross Road. Here books of all sorts and sizes are to be found, from the celebrated one which 3 being "the biggest bookshop in the world" to the tiny, dusty little places which seem to have been left over from Dickens’ time. Some of these shops 4 , or will obtain, any kind of book, but many of them specialize in second-hand books, in art books, in foreign books, in books on 5 , politics or any other of the myriad (各式各样的) subjects about which books may be written.
Although it may be the most 6 place for Londoners to buy books, Chafing Cross Road is not the cheapest. For the really cheap second-hand volumes, the collector must 7 off the beaten track, to Farringdon Road, in the East Central district of London. Here there is nothing so grandiose (宏伟的) as bookshops. Instead, the booksellers come along each morning and 8 their sacks of books on to small barrows which line the gutters (排水沟；贫民窟). And the collectors, some professional and some 9 , pounce up on the dusty cascade (小瀑布，倾泻). In places like this one can still, 10 , pick up for a few pence an old volume that may be worth many pounds.