Brian Behrend’s microblog
Finished reading Conclave by Robert Harris yesterday. Kept expecting it to turn into a conspiracy thriller but turned out just to be a well written procedural into process of electing a pope. With good characters and a few twists along the way.
Originally picked up Conclave because of the movie without being familiar with Harris, but after reading it now I’m interested in reading Fatherland and Pompeii that seem to maybe be even more up my alley.
Rating: 4 stars
Haymarket Books is giving away Ten Free Ebooks for Getting Free including titles like How We Get Free, Hope in the Dark, and Let This Radicalize You that look like good reads to help us rise to the current moment. (via Kottke)
Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
As someone who didn’t grow up on this I don’t really get it. Sweet story, pretty below average music and not nearly enough of it. My youngest loves otters more than anything in the world right now and still just barely held her attention.
Rating: 3 stars
Finished the last 10% of this on a plane and boy were there some dusty moments. Great story with some twists that I somehow completely missed were coming.
Left some larger world stuff unexplained at the end that I wanted to know more about. With the way this book’s focus was so completely different than the first not sure I’ll get those questions resolved. Still loved it though and definitely will be jumping to book 3 and continue to read anything else Chambers has written.
Rating: 5 stars
Crossposted on Goodreads