No as much action on here because....

I am working on helping my sister in law as a beta reader for a novel she's written. Well, it will be a series of novels, actually. I tried to be a beta reader before, but my life got crazy and I was not able to be a good beta. But I really want to help my SIL, so I am really focusing on reading her manuscript through carefully. Because of this, I don't want to confuse my head with too many storylines at once (like I am known to do...) and I'm not devouring it as fast as I would normally read a book because I want to be careful to pick up on any discrepancies or things that she would or wouldn't want to make it into a final draft. So I'm being careful and taking my time. So in the meantime, I'm really only listening to some audio books.

I've also gotten REALLY busy with all the musical endeavors and jobs in my life-Christmas is the "musical madness month"! I'll be getting back to reading more regularly soon, though!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick

I listened to this book on audio, which was interesting because I know this book has a lot of pictures in it and that the pictures are part of the story. So now I'm really interested to look at a physical copy of the book to see how (and what parts) were narrated from the pictures, because I didn't feel like I missed out anything in the story line. The sound effects of this audio were REALLY good. When he's running, you can hear him running, you hear the tick of the clocks, stuff like that.

It had some parts remenicient of Oliver Twist (though not nearly so dark). Overall it was enjoyable and adventurous. Although, being a book geared towards middle readers, it didn't delve very deep into why certain characters made certain choices. Perhaps it's to allow for some discussion for that age group to decide for themselves what would motivate a person to do certain things.

I also liked the connection between imagination of authors and filmmakers with real invention. I think most things of technology were first contrived in the imagination of an author!

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for Goodreads.