Kindle Free Pick of the Week: I Used to Know That

Stuff You Forgeot From School

This book covers:

• Figures of Speech (and other devices for spicing up your writing): Expressions used in a nonliteral way, such as when you say, "My lips are sealed," but you haven’t put glue over them. Includes hyperbole, which is exaggeration for effect, as in "I’ve told you a hundred times."

• Notable British Authors: From William Blake and William Golding to George Orwell and Virginia Woolf, relearn which authors wrote the most notable poems and tomes. You’ll also find fun facts about each author, including that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle started writing fiction when his medical practice slowed and Jonathan Swift wrote his own obituary.

• International Authors: Homer’s not just the name of a character on The Simpsons. This 9^th century Greek writer penned the great epics the Iliad and the Odyssey.

• Arithmetic: With division you divide a divisor into a dividend and the answer is a quotient. If there is anything left over, it is called a remainder. So 15 divided by 2 gives a quotient of 7 with a remainder of 1.

• Biology: The term biology comes from the Greek, meaning study of life; therefore, this field of learning concerns plants and animals and how the human body works. Give your central nervous system something to ponder, such as how a plant is structured or which elements make up the periodic table.

• Explorers: A quick rundown of people who discovered some of the regions of the world, like Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512, Italian), who discovered the mouth of the Amazon and the River Plate, which made him important enough to have a continent or two named after him.

• Geography: Read this section, and you won’t be able to deny that the Nile is a river in Egypt, or that Russia has five of the longest rivers in the world.

Sure to touch a chord with anyone old enough to have forgotten half of what they learned at school, here is a perfect gift for every perennial student. Make this and all of the Blackboard Booksô a permanent fixture on your eReader, and you’ll have instant access to searchable knowledge. Whether you need homework help or want to win that trivia game, this series is the trusted source for fun facts.