[A]（已给定） Peters likes to photograph butterflies in a landscape, celebrating the beauty of their surroundings as well as the insects themselves. His pictures of a Glanville fritillary rising from the sea-pinks beside the chalk cliffs of Compton Bay on the Isle of Wight are particularly glorious. These take-off shots are even more challenging because they require a wide-angle lens, which means he must be less than 2cm from the butterfly. It’s incredibly difficult to get that close to a skittish sun-warmed insect. Unlike some photographers, who “cheat” by keeping insects in a fridge to slow them down, Peters refuses to tamper with wild butterflies.

[B] Peters’ signature shot is a butterfly “take-off”, showing the multiple wing-beats of one butterfly in one frame as it lifts off from a flower. How does he capture it? Technology helps. A typical digital SLR camera shoots 20 frames a second. He uses a high-speed OM System which shoots 120 frames a second.

[C]（已给定） Britain has relatively few butterfly species compared with mainland Europe and 80% are in decline, mostly because intensive chemical farming has reduced many species to tiny fragments of habitat and small nature reserves. Global heating is benefiting some species but others are too isolated to find suitable new habitat, and gardening habits—paving over gardens and using pesticides—aren’t helping either. Butterflies may not pollinate as many plants as wild bees and hoverflies, but because British butterflies are the best-studied group of insects in the world, they are an extremely useful indicator of the wider declines in flying insects.

[D] Five years ago, at summer’s end, Andrew Fusek Peters was diagnosed with bowel cancer. “I was waiting for surgery, feeling really ill, sitting in my garden. It was amazing weather and there were painted lady butterflies everywhere,” he says. “They were a symbol of fragile life, of hope and defiance, and something appealed to my soul.”

[E] That makes it sound easy, and artificial, but Peters insists it is still a massive challenge. He typically takes between 10,000 and 20,000 shots to get one butterfly take-off sequence in focus. At such high shutter speeds, the depth of field is tiny, and as butterflies do not fly in a straight line they swiftly flutter out of focus. As well as thousands of attempts, it takes patience and fieldcraft to anticipate a butterfly’s likely flight-line—and catch it—in focus.

[F] So what’s the appeal of a long, sweaty day in pursuit of an elusive, fast-moving wild animal? “It just feels bloody brilliant,” says Peters. “If I’ve had a full day of good encounters with butterflies, met interesting butterfly people and I’ve got some good shots, that becomes a vault in my spiritual bank. It’s a happy feeling.”

[G] A children’s author and poet who had become a keen amateur photographer, Peters watched the butterflies and idly wondered if he could capture them in flight. It swiftly became an obsession as he recovered from a successful operation to remove the cancer. In recent summers, he has travelled the length and breadth of Britain to photograph all 58 native species of butterfly. Now the fruits of these summers have been published in a beautiful new book.

[H]（已给定） A butterfly takes off so quickly it is still impossible to react quickly enough to capture that take-off but if he half-presses the shutter, the camera saves the 70 previous frames before the moment he actually takes the picture. “It’s time travel, so I don’t miss the moment of take-off,” he says. After he’s captured the butterfly taking off, he layers 10 to 15 frames together in Photoshop.

[A] And just read a single poem. In his Oxford lectures, Seamus Heaney argued that a poem draws a picture of reality, a “glimpsed alternative” that sets up a contradiction with your own, in ways little and large. The negotiation, between you and it, is the heart of the matter. What does the poet see that you don’t? What does the difference mean? It could be one of the best conversations you ever have. Forget self-help books; reading is self-help in action.

[B] But for the most part, this isn’t what the business community does. I have yet to meet a chief executive who reads regularly. Many skip newspapers, and magazines are a stretch. They don’t have time, they say. It’s inefficient; they can get the information they need from those around them. At a pinch, they might pick up a business book before a long flight, in the hope that, like a cookbook, it will provide a foolproof recipe. Some are drawn to what I think of as “business car crash” books—the stories of Theranos, Purdue, WeWork. But outside those narrow pools of interest, a vast ocean awaits, bountiful with simmering ideas, mental adventure and imaginative refreshment.

[C]（已给定） Neuroscientists have been at pains to demonstrate that the pleasure a book provides isn’t indulgence; it’s good for you. Reading will keep you better informed about the world but it can also improve our tech-shattered ability to concentrate. Standing in the shoes of others fine tunes our social understanding, useful as we struggle to understand friends, neighbours, customers and co-workers. Different parts of our brain engage as we simulate scenes, characters and mental states. Our imagination—remember that?—is rekindled.

[D] It is undoubtedly true that all work and no play really does make Jack, or Jill, dull. The cure is right at hand. Reading is cheap, easy and, most important, it’s fun. Liberate your imagination this year.

[E] We are living through a golden age of science writing, so lucid and accessible that even lay readers can relish the unpredictability of discovery. Daunted by uncertainty? Stand in the shoes of scientists and witness the degree to which breakthroughs emerge from accidents, conflict and sheer mental stamina. “We are never sure of anything,” says the physicist (and writer) Carlo Rovelli.

[F]（已给定） You don’t need to get out more. If, like most business people, you spend your life dashing from office to plane, train to home, boardroom to washroom, what you really need to do is stay in more, sit down—and read a book.

[G] Reading has also been found to make us more helpful, to reduce bias, and even to increase longevity—something we will enjoy all the more if we have a good book in our hands. (And yes, all these benefits are more closely associated with physical books than digital ones.)

[H]（已给定） Read fiction. Any fiction. Free yourself from algorithms and choose—anything. You don’t need technology for an immersive experience—just surrender to narratives across time and place. Modern (Sebastian Barry or Olga Tokarczuk), classic (Virginia Woolf or James Baldwin) or genre (Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Georges Simenon)—it doesn’t matter. Fiction invites you to loiter unseen in the lives of others. We are living through a golden age of translation too, so you can go anywhere in time or place.