The Bees Knees

 by Sophia Chen Hello people. Originally for this week's blog, I was going to recommend books for API Heritage Month, but frankly, I'm very seldom satisfied with the Asian rep we get in YA -- or any American mainstream books, for that matter. So I'll just recommend one, or rather two: a duology, made up of the books  Flame in the Mist and Smoke in the Sun  by Renee Ahdieh. Flame in the Mist  is part romance, part fantasy, part historical fiction. Typically I don't really enjoy historical fiction novels that involve magic, because I kind of like to keep my genres distinct for whatever reason, but I did enjoy this one regardless. It's a novel about an aristocratic girl named Mariko, who lives in a fictionalized version of imperial Japan who is betrothed to some prince or other. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), her caravan is attacked on the way to meeting the prince for the first time and everyone except her dies tragically. Instead of returning to her home, she decid...

 Hello everyone, the past five days of my life, I have been extremely invested in a particular piece of literature—to the point where it is all I read the moment I get home. "What is this fascinating book?", you might be asking. Well I shall make you wait no longer. This book is none other than the Barron's AP Computer Science A prep book. Second in the Barron's book series, I decided to pick this one up after finishing the first book in the series last year, Barron's AP Calculus BC Premium prep book, since it was so fascinating. While I had originally planned to read this earlier, I didn't have time to start until last Sunday due to an interesting phenomenon known as procrastination. Nonetheless, another interesting thing called the AP CSA Exam deadline spoke true words to me, so I did end up summoning the motivation to read it after all. Now, I will share with you my completely unbiased observations. Having been student's choice for 80+ years, Barron...

 If you're reading this blog, you probably have already read the first one, so I'm just going to jump straight into this one! 1. Cigarettes out the Window "Cigarettes out the Window" is one of their most popular songs from this album. It has a different feel to it, however. It doesn't have the same "repeating-factor" and dream-like feeling as all of their other songs do in this album. It still has the calm vibe they are known for, still tackling intense topics with harsh words and a calm vibe. This song explores the topic of loneliness because, at this point, the main character has already accepted that the one he loved has left. The sampling in this song is one of my favorites. They took an old Hollywood movie clip while playing the instrumental in the background and it really just encompasses the whole vibes they were going for. My favorite lyric is: "She'd disappear for an hour and a half / And when she comes back she'd brush her teeth...