Ah, the first day of August! For myself and most in my area, August heralds the return to school, set this year on August 25. That means I only have 24 days and the rest of today to finish all of my summer reading assignments. I have assignments from two classes: English II Honors and AP World History. For English, I must read A Lesson Before Dying, which I finished earlier today and really don't like very much. After reading the book, I am to take notes and answer questions about the book on 5x8 index cards. Yes, you read that correctly. Not 3x5, 5x8. That's about half the size of a standard sheet of paper. I didn't even know they existed before this assignment. Anyway, Ding will be visiting today to work on the assignment.

I have two books for AP World History, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History. The books for this class are much better. I've read A Long Way Gone before several times, and it's a good book; I recommend it. The assignment for A Long Way Gone is a book report. The other book, The Human Web, is pretty good as history books go. I'm not required to read the entire thing, but vocabulary and questions are to be defined and answered (respectively) on the prologue and first three chapters.