The real Alice of Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ dies at 83. A high school favorite amongst my friend group. Will need to play it for the kids on the drive Thursday. RIP Alice.
Goodreads challenge and last 5
Creativity, Inc. – ★★★★
Interesting background on the history of Pixar, good thoughts on fostering a creative culture, and really liked the focus on giving and receiving difficult feedback, but disappointed in the fact that every anecdote seemed to end with “and then the team worked 100 hour weeks for months and never saw their family but we got it done.” Or “then they worked two straight weeks instead of taking their Christmas vacation.”
Rating: 4 stars
Crossposted on Goodreads
Everything you know about some chocolate is wrong and German Chocolate Cake
As a German growing up in German parts of Texas eating German Chocolate cake I was super excited to add some German Chocolate cake knowledge but it’s covered in the link and now instead I want discuss the coconut slander going on in the kottke.org comments.
Bloglines > Google Reader
Bring back Bloglines!
Find me on Bluesky
So I’m on Bluesky as @bhrnd.fun now, I posted about why and about my first impressions over on my name.com site
Conclave – ★★★★
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
Ten Free Ebooks for Getting Free from Haymarket
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 – ★★★
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
A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2) – ★★★★★
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