Reviews

I read Theodore Sturgeon's The Dreaming Jewels over the weekend. It's one of the books I didn't realize Eric (well, we) had but noticed when we moved books out of the nursery last week. I keep hearing that Sturgeon is a fantastic and phenomenal writer, and I've read two of his books now and I'm disappointed. It was a nice book, as was the other one (More Than Human), but they're not mind-bending and illuminating and everything that people say they are. Apparently he goes with Heinlein in my mind as a class of over-hyped writers. I wonder if this is because I'm so used to contemporary writing, or because I have a different viewpoint from the people who admire their work, or what.

We saw Star Trek on Friday (I think Eric was disappointed there was no line or anything to get in, but the theater did fill up respectably) and it's a decent movie as a movie, but not as part of Star Trek canon, according to Eric. The things that bugged him were things I didn't know (ages were off, Kirk wasn't born on a starship, etc.), but there were definitely flaws in it as a movie; there were some logical inconsistencies and not much character development except a little in Spock, and it felt like it was stuck between trying to appeal to the older Star Trek fans (especially bringing in all the main characters, who are all ridiculously young and all geniuses at their jobs despite being ridiculously young, to the ship at the same time) and to newer, young fans (too much flash and fun without logic to back it up). Also, it technically passed the Bechdel-Wallace test, but only technically, and I really didn't like that the only major female character was reduced to a love interest and nothing else, despite also being ridiculously young and a genius at her job. I did think the actor who played McCoy was fantastic, though.

I also made the sourdough onion rye bread and it's pretty good, but it needs work.