Books I've Been Reading

The Savage Stone Age (Horrible Histories) by Terry Deary

This book gives a very funny overview of the Stone Age. I learned that Neanderthals used to suck out the brains of other Neanderthals! I also learned that Stone Age people used to bury their dead (after a while) in burrows. They used to capture mammoths by making them run into tar pits. They also used to kill bison by making them run over cliffs. (Poor bison!) The book has some very funny cartoons and it should delight audiences of any age.



Number Freak: From 1 to 200: The Hidden Language of Numbers Revealed by Derrick Niederman


Number Freak is about numbers and all their interesting nooks and crannies. It informed me that Franklin D. Roosevelt was afraid of the number 13 and that in a 9x9 Sudoku grid; no puzzle with fewer than 16 givens (number clues) can produce a unique solution. I was also amazed by the de Bruijn cycle (it's made up of 16 ones and zeroes). I am still reading this book.



The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and the audiobook narrated by Jim Weiss (both unabridged)
I read the entire Wind in the Willows in two days while listening to the audiobook. It's about a toad's best friends who try to cure his addiction for motor cars. They failed but he got into an adventure that eventually cured him of it. The book was extremely good and I'm sure it will charm audiences everywhere.

Answer To Riddle

The answer is the letters E, V, R and Y.

A Riddle

"We are in everything, but not in nothing.1 of us is in English and French, but not in Spanish.3 of us are in Geometry, but not in Calculus. 3 of us are in veranda and 1 of us is in balcony. Who are we?"

Do you like this riddle? I made it myself! I was inspired by a puzzle book called The Greatest Puzzles Ever Solved. Here are some puzzle books I really like:

   

Answer to riddle in next post! Hee, hee, hee.

The Sentence Without An "e"

I just thought of a sentence that does not have a single "e" in it:

A thousand cats sitting on chairs.

What I Learned Today

German

Henning's Haus is a fun, German website with nice games. One of them is called Who's Who. There will be pictures of people along with their names. There's a Mystery Person...who is one of the people pictured. Your job is to find out who the person is by asking for clues in German e.g. Do you have red hair? (Hast du rote haare?). In the end, you are done when all the pictures except one are deleted. The person left is the Mystery Person. Click on the Question Mark to find out who it is.



Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings

I learnt about how Ken Jennings finally qualified for Jeopardy!. He did this by completing a test that had some of the more difficult material. I also learned that Ken Jennings used to play a game that was a lot like Jeopardy! when he was in college. The game was called Quiz Bowl. In Quiz Bowl, you use buzzers and the only difference between Jeopardy! and Quiz Bowl is that you can ring in anytime you know the answer to a clue. In Jeopardy! you have to wait until the clue is read out.

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham

My Mom and I have read until Chapter 7. So far, Nat Bowditch, the main character, has been indentured into ship chandlery. Indentured means to stay in a company for a few years as an apprentice. Chandlery means a place that sells small things.

So far, I like this book. I like the adventures that befall Nat. Nat is also extremely smart.




I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World by Jag Bhalla*

This book is about idioms from around the world. The author puts all the idioms into categories like Health and Animals and subcategories like Canines, Felines and Birds. Here are a few idioms that I really like:

"She swallowed her birth certificate" (she died)
"To get your jaws dislocated" (to die laughing)
"To be peeled as a banana" (to die laughing)
"Ducks are falling already roasted"(it's scorching hot)
"Those waiting for ducks to fall already roasted will be waiting a very long time" (a Chinese proverb meaning: nothing will come immediately to you)

*Mom's note: Parental preview strongly encouraged.

What I Learned Today

Mad Science by Theodore Gray

Some of the pages I read were pages 17 - 19 on Making Salt the Hard Way and pages 20-22 on Cooking at -320F. Cooking at -320F is about making ice cream using liquid nitrogen. The liquid nitrogen freezes the ice cream mixture and does it so quickly that there is no grainy texture. Liquid nitrogen gives the ice crystals that give the grainy texture no chance to form.

German (Language Arts: German, 100+ Series) by Kelly Morris

I completed pages 15 - 17 on Weather and Family terms. Some words I learnt are die Sonne (the sun), der Regen (the rain), der Vater (the father), die Tochter (the daughter) and der Onkel (the uncle).

Today, I also played a game from a website called Planet Science. I created a planet on the website and called it Aaargh!. It had a safe orbit around the Sun, had a suitable distance to support life, had the correct atmosphere to support life and it had the correct kind of surface and also, a good spin and tilt to make it stable. It also had a moon. The game is called Planet 10. Try it if you like!

What I Learned Today

Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History

Today, I read pages 362-363 (about Josef Stalin) and 370-371 (Europe at War -- World War II). I also visited the Quicklinks.

Josef Stalin was a Russian dictator who tried to make Russia more powerful. He had smallpox as a child and later, he normally had his photos retouched to hide his scars.

During The Blitz, London was bombed and there were lots of evacuees. Some of the children did not like the places they were evacuated to but some didn't mind. The children who did not like the places were very homesick.

Chemistry Matters

I did Chapter 1-2 of Chemistry Matters but I didn't finish it. I learned about purification, melting points and boiling points and some apparatus used to purify chemicals. I completed 14 problems from Worksheet 1 and Worksheet 2 of the Chemistry Matters Workbook.

Coordinate Graphing: Creating Geometry Quilts

Today, I did the Grandmother's Puzzle quilt. So far, I have finished 17 quilt patterns from the book.

Tomorrow is my birthday and my Mom baked an orange cake with chocolate icing and 5 chocolate cookies (Lu) on top.

My Favorite Books Right Now