Brian Behrend’s microblog
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
Four extra stars just for King Herod’s Song being the absolute funniest thing me and the kids have seen in months. They were so baffled and delighted for much of this musical but that song sent them over the edge and onto the floor laughing.
Rating: 4 stars
Finished reading and wrote up a blog post on my thoughts on Cal Newport’s Deep Work. A book I’ve been wanting to read for a good bit and I ended up having a lot of takeaways including some notes on changes to my personal habits I’ve already made.
In Real Life
by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang
Good art and message but definitely aimed at a younger audience. The in game stuff and parts about labor movements and about not making assumptions about people in other situations/cultures was solid despite its shallowness but the IRL parts of Anda’s life were the weakest.
Rating: 3 stars
The Atlantic published a list of The Great American Novels from the last 100 years and I’m eager to see if I can try to make my way through it. I have read very few of these and barely heard of even the ones from the last five years so will be nice challenge and education.
So do they ever explain why ivory is so valuable in the future?
Really enjoyed this animal conservation/climate change story and went along easily with the science fictiony parts, but was regularly distracted by the premise that in the near future ivory would become seemingly the most important substance on earth. One note about it being needed for future iPhones or something would have helped.
Between this and The Mountain in the Sea I’m now very interested in catching up to Nayler’s short stories and will definitely be excited for whatever he writes next. Great book covers too.
Rating: 4 stars
Crossposted on Goodreads
Buy The Tusks of Extinction on Bookshop
Still Life With Crows
by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
So do the plot of these ever stop hinging on the world’s most moronic cops doing moronic things for moronic reasons to try to thwart Pendergast because they’re morons?
Rating: 3 stars
Played through SNES Aladdin for first time today on my Anbernic. Started it many times but not sure I’d ever gotten past Stage 1 before.
How did anyone ever beat this before save states? Thank goodness for GarlicOS’s ability to save/load states without even pausing.
Great looking game, just ok everything else. Still fun to get all the way through finally.
A group of women next to me at Dune 2 snuck in an entire pizza in a purse. Legends.
Worse than the original and the stage musical in every possible way but still pretty decent. I have same opinion of this as I seem to of all stage to screen adaptations, the big, unrealistic, fun stage-style numbers are great and every other song is ruined.
The last third is solid and Auli’i Cravalho is pretty fantastic as Janis. She deserves to be a star but of course I’m biased because I have a pre-Moana photo of her holding my infant in Hawaii.
I like Renee Rapp’s music but she was kinda just ok in this. World Burn is her best number in this.
Rating: 3 stars
Crossposted on Letterboxd
Watch Mean Girls on Paramount+
I started and quit this book on Audible back in 2014, but after seeing me read Cloud Cuckoo Land by Doerr last year my 6th grader bought me the All the Light We Cannot See paperback for Christmas. Not 100% sure why I bounced off it so quickly in 2014 (it’s been 10 years and I’m old) but glad her urging made me finally pick it up and read it now because it was a great read that I enjoyed quite a bit.
Considering how recently I read Cloud Cuckoo Land it’s hard not to compare the two. In All the Light We Cannot See Doerr employs some of the same tricks (not meant pejoratively) of telling an interweaving story from multiple perspectives and timelines he would eventually expand on in Cloud Cuckoo. This story is much more grounded in World War II and the historical fiction genre though and lacks the science fiction elements and genre bending that made me really enjoy that made me like that book so much.
Still the fantastic writing and heart and characters (particularly Marie-Laure my goodness) made this a remarkably engaging and occasionally heartbreaking read. While I didn’t like it quite as much as Cloud Cuckoo Land, it was still one of my favorite recent reads and one that will stay with me for a while.
(I have thoughts/questions on how Doerr spent an entire book getting you to sympathize with some young Nazis and then eventually wrapped up that plot line but those are a bit too spoilery for this space.)
Rating: 5 stars
Crossposted on Goodreads
Buy All the Light We Cannot See on Bookshop