The United Nations climate change summit, now in its second week in Montreal, is a beast of a conference (read official reports from each day here). Even experienced attendees go crazy trying to decipher its massive schedule of events and activities. Newspapers only report the biggest story of each day – if they report on the conference at all. And they often don't report at all on the most interesting details, which tend to come from each night’s parties and each day’s chance hallway meetings.

Which is why blogs are the perfect forum for reading up on the confab. Science writer Amanda Haag is blogging from Montreal for Nature.com, the web site of the prominent science journal. Haag's lively dispatches provide news and color from the conference, great descriptions of the characters that populate the climate change world, and a pitch-perfect account of the frustrations that come from “high-level quibbling.”

For another good read, try the Sierra Club’s “Notes from the Climate Conference,” a chatty rundown of one activist's daily schedule that walks (or runs) you through meetings, issues, sideshow events (like the “Save Hockey” rally), and random run-ins.