I finished reading The House of Hades, by Rick Riordan, and American Heretics: Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and the History of Religious Intolerance, by Peter Gottschalk. American Heretics was ... good, but not especially revelatory (ha ha) for me, Branch Davidians aside. With only a chapter dedicated to each religion's history of religious oppression in the United States, and at only 210 pages, there was little room for analysis and it mostly amounted to and "This happened, then this happened" sort of history book.
The House of Hades is similar to previous books in the series - teenage characters whose inner thoughts somehow seem suspiciously similar to their pre-teen portrayals, prose that seems bound and determined to make me claw my eyes out from is sheer cheesiness (seriously, it makes Harry Potter look like high art), and plot conflicts that you just know are going to be mitigated by some form of deus ex machina.
... But I still enjoyed it. I think it's mostly that I like the concept, and the series has done a great job with its toned-down-for-kids-but-still-mostly-accurate portrayal of various Greek and Roman mythological stories and cosmogony. I just wish that the writing didn't make me groan quite so much! The series also actually got me interested in Greek mythology again, and I read Metamorphoses because of it. I'd also like to read at least some of the Bibliotheca, which is apparently used for the stories and characters.
I also read the Prologue and Introduction of Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker. To sum up my early impressions: I'm just going to assume that the word "magisterial" was thought up to describe history tomes like this.