Thursday, June 21, 2007

Happy Summer Solstice!


Solstice Lily
Originally uploaded by pfly
Yay--summer! For some people at least, that means a little free time. Not us, but congratulations to those of you for whom it does.

Our current entertainments:

We've been borrowing Lost on DVD from the library (yay libraries!) and watching it (usually in bed with headphones). I'm kind of glad neither of us watched it on TV. We're on disc 5 of Season 1, and so far it's magically delicious. Ha! Disguised sci-fi. Take that, mainstream programming.

We finished reading the His Dark Materials trilogy. We loved it, loved it, loved it--except for the end of the very last book. Unfortunately it kind of ruined the memory of the previous nine blissful months of reading the rest of the series to each other. If there's one thing that's worse than a really contrived happy ending, it's a really contrived sad ending. I understand some stories have to end sadly, but this one really seemed forced.

While putting Limelet to sleep, I've been reading a lot of Sheri S. Tepper. Old-school feminist sci-fi stories that grip you from the start and never let you go! She's a bit transparent in her themes in a number of of her works (Beauty, The Fresco), but the stories and characters are really compelling anyway.

Anyway, happy summer.

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Watching TV shows on DVD is really the only way to go. I went through the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica that way and it's awesome. I really hate commercials, especially those for cars, bad beer, lousy food, and the pharmaceuticals required to cope with the first three things.

The only problem is now I'm waiting for the third season to come out and they're taking forever! DRAT! But still worth it.

On the subject of female sci-fi writers, I've been meaning to get a book of collected stories by Alice B. Sheldon (aka James Tiptree, Jr.). She wrote "The Screwfly Solution," which is one of my favorite sci-fi short stories ever.

Tim said...

Ditto what Andrew said. Elizabeth and I are stuck in limbo, waiting for the next season of Galactica.