Book Review: The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Government by Mary M. Shaffrey and Melanie Fonder

ISBN: 1592573282
Published: June 7th, 2005
Publisher: Alpha
Read from March 28th to April 12th, 2012
Synopsis from Goodreads:

This overview of all the government's major institutions and agencies, the election process, and the creation and passing of laws and taxes has been updated with the latest information on such important issues as campaign finance reform, fundraising, and homeland security.

• Completely updated resource section includes the latest government websites

• The only American government book to include the results of the 2004 presidential election

• Re-structured to complement high school and college political science/civics courses

Review:

Character Trip to the Zoo

Today was my school's character trip, which is basically a field trip that every kid in the school who hasn't gotten in trouble during the year gets to go on.  This year we went to the zoo.  It was a lot of fun, even though the zoo here really doesn't have that many animals.

Haley, Jordan, Beth, Bethany, and I (plus various classmates we ran into considering it's a small zoo and kids from our school were everywhere) spent about two hours or so wandering around and looking at animals.  Haley, Jordan, and I had went to this same zoo a few months ago, and while there we had been able to pet this South American porcupine.  This time we got to see her in her exhibit.  She is adorable.  There was also this really cute and adorable nocturnal cat who was so tiny.  It basically looked like a domesticated kitten.

Eventually we decided to head up to the only place that sells food in the entire zoo.  It was packed.  Apparently everyone else from our school had decided to eat at the same time.  We stood in line for almost forty minutes, and by the time we were done eating, we only had a little bit of time to look around the gift shop before we left.

We got back to school with about an hour of the school day left, so we had to go to our fourth block class and just sit around.  (I wish we could have just stayed at the zoo at least a half hour longer.)  Ji, Matt, and I played card games for a while before we could finally leave.

It didn't really even feel like a school day.  And, since we get Friday off this week, there's only one more school day left before a three day weekend!  I can't wait.

Holy Week and Easter Weekend

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it, and happy Passover as well to anyone who celebrates it.  I can't believe it's been five days since I last wrote a blog post!  It doesn't feel like it was that long.  I don't think I'll be posting much here this month.  I have a feeling this month is going to be hectic as it gets closer to graduation, so posts here will probably be rare.  I'm still going to try for at least one a week though.

Since it's been Holy Week, my week was full of school, work, and church, and that was about it.  I love the Holy Week masses though.  They're definitely my favorite masses of the year.

I think I've finally gotten to the point where the amount of homework I have isn't stressing me out anymore.  I've had the same amount all year and the same schedule all year, and since everything's worked so far, I've finally let myself calm down now that there's only about a month and a half of school left.  I still haven't made a final decision on what college I'm attending, and that's still stressful.  I have a feeling I'm never going to be completely sure of my decision until the fall, and hopefully I just make the right one.  I still have no idea what I'm going to do.  No matter how many times I go over everything I know about each and think about it, I just can't decide which one I should go to.  Hopefully I'll make a good decision soon.

Book Review: Reckless Magic by Rachel Higginson

ISBN: 2940011343339
Published: March 15th, 2011
Publisher: Smashwords/self-published
Read from January 20th to March 31st, 2012
Synopsis from Goodreads:

16 year old Eden Matthews has been in and out of private schools for the last two years. Kingsley is her last chance to finish high school and she is determined to simply do that. But when she meets Kiran Kendrick and her world opens to something she thought only existed in fairy tales, she's unsure what her future will hold. Suddenly she is captivated by a boy who seems to be the source of all of her problems and struggling to rescue her best friend from a foreign prison. When attempts are made on Kiran's life, Eden alone must save him. Thrust into a world that is more make-believe than reality, Eden has to find her own destiny without losing those she loves most. Reckless is an intricate story of mystery, adventure, magic and love. Eden Matthews is an unlikely heroine set on a path to save the world and her loved ones before its too late.

Review:


I absolutely loved this book!  I know the fact that it's self-published will make some people a bit cautious about reading it, but I think you should give it a chance anyway.  I fell in love with it, and I plan on buying the others in the series as soon as possible.  The only reason it took me two months to read was because I only had it on my computer, and that made it difficult to find time to read.  Whenever I did get time to read it, I ended up reading way longer than I should have and a couple of times I ended up staying up later than I should have because I couldn't stop reading.  This is the first time I've ever considered buying an e-reader because I want to read the rest of the series in a more convenient way, so I may wait to get the rest of the series after buying one.  Hopefully, that's soon though because after reading Reckless Magic, I want to read the second one immediately!


I find the plot really intriguing, and I can't wait to see where it goes in the rest of the series.  I loved the world and magic in the books.  I don't think I've ever read anything like it before.  I also enjoyed all of the characters.  They're all very interesting characters, and I can't wait to see what happens to them in the rest of the series.


Reckless Magic was the best book I've read in a while, and I am most definitely looking forward to the rest of the series.

Less Than Two Months!

The first day back after a break from school is always pretty tiring, at least for me.  I think I spent most of the day half asleep, and then I went to work afterwards.  Needless to say, I'm exhausted, and I'm having one of those nights where it's hard to even completely remember what happened today.

We only have a little over a month now until the AP tests, which feels a little weird.  We're on the Cold War in AP U.S. history right now, so that's only a month to get everything else in.  I know it's possible, but it just doesn't feel like we should be that close to finishing the book.  As for AP English, we're basically doing what we've been doing since we came back from Christmas break: lots of lessons on various different things, although we're doing literature less frequently now.

Overall nothing much happened at school today, and like I said, I spend most of it in a daze.  It was nice to see my friends though, since I hadn't seen some of them in a week, and Haley and Jordan had some amusing stories of their Florida trip.  The hardest class to get through today was definitely probability and statistics.  He only had us reviewing, but it's the last class of the day.  By then my customary Monday headache had kicked in and was worse than normal thanks to break.  In addition to trying to remember everything after break, I had to work through the pain.  We had partners, but even while working on it with Ji, I could barely concentrate.  It was really hard to get through those problems, even though the problems themselves weren't that hard.

My sister gets home from New York at around three in the morning tomorrow, and then she has to go to school tomorrow because the school won't excuse them another day.  (It was a school choir trip.)  It should be interesting since she's probably going to feel much worse than I did after my first day back after not getting much sleep at all.

It's now less than two months until graduation!  I can't believe it.