January 30, 2020 · 1:00 am

Vintage Science Fiction Month: The Trouble With Tribbles

Vintage Science Fiction Blog Challenge badge. It shows a rocket ship against a red background. There is a bubble city in the background. Vintage Science Fiction month takes place every January, and has a few guidelines:

 – read, watch, listen to, or experience something science fiction / fantasy that was created in 1979 or earlier

 – talk about it online sometime in January

 – have fun

If any of my readers are also interested in participating this month, let Little Red Reviewer know about your posts if you’d like them to be included in her official roundups. 

Today I’m going to be discussing one of my favourite Star Trek: The Original Series episodes, “The Trouble with Tribbles.” It first aired on December 29, 1967 during the second season of this series and does not require any prior knowledge of the Star Trek universe in order to enjoy it.

The last time I blogged about Star Trek, Ruth Feiertag asked me to dedicate entire posts to single Star Trek episodes and to go into much more detail about them in the future. Ruth, I’m following your advice!

Text says The Trouble with Tribbles written by David Gerrold. Image in the background is of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Original Series. All of the Original series Star Trek episodes are available on Netflix in Canada. I’d recommend watching this episode before checking out the rest of my post unless you don’t mind spoilers from a 50+ year old tv show.

This post is going to mostly consist of a fan talking about something she really liked. There might be a little bit of proper reviewing happening, but definitely not as much as usual.

The Trouble with Tribbles

Episode description:

To protect a space station with a vital grain shipment, Kirk must deal with Federation bureaucrats, a Klingon battle cruiser and a peddler who sells furry, purring, hungry little creatures as pets.

Many Star Trek episodes throughout the years have covered serious, sensitive topics.

And then there are lighthearted episodes that seem to have been written for the sheer fun of it.

Can you guess which category “The Trouble with Tribbles” falls into?

Perhaps showing Uhura cuddling a sweet little tribble will give you another hint.

Nichelle Nichols as Uhura. She's holding a tribble.

Nichelle Nichols as Uhura. She is holding her brand new tribble.

At this point in the series, Uhura and the rest of the crew had faced plenty of dangers. Seeing her cuddle a small, fuzzy, hamster-like creature given to her by a travelling salesman made me smile.

She took her new pet back to the ship and it soon gave birth to a litter of baby tribbles. Thrilled, Uhura gave them away to her coworkers.

Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. He and Uhura are holding tribbles while Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Ensign Freeman (Paul Baxley) look on.

Sharing the tribbles.

At the same time, The Enterprise happened to be carrying a large load of quadrotriticale grain that was bound for a place called Sherman’s Planet.

It seemed to be a perfectly normal journey until the crew realized the tribbles were reproducing much faster than any hamster or other similar creature on Earth.

Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and and Deforest Spark as Dr. McCoy. They are looking over a table filled with tribbles.

Spock and Dr. McCoy looking over a table filled with tribbles.

The question is, what is going to happen if or when the tribbles discover the grain this ship is carrying?

I’ll leave it up to my readers to discover the answer to this question themselves. What I will say is that I loved seeing all of the characters out of their element. Fighting a scaly monster on an alien planet is one thing.

Figuring out how to deal with a small, fuzzy antagonist that reproduces faster than anyone can imagine and will eat just about anything is quite another.

This is one of those Star Trek episodes that has definitely stood the test of time. The humour in it still felt fresh. Tribbles will cause mischief no matter when or where they show up, and this is even more true for people who have no idea what they’re dealing with.

If you’ve never watched Star Trek, this is a fun place to start. The episode will give you all of the information you need. Feel free to dive in.

If you’re already a fan of it, this is the sort of episode that is somehow even funnier on the second or fifth or twentieth rewatch because of all of the little tells the characters give that they have no idea how to react to these creatures and may just have a long list of antagonists they’d prefer to be dealing with instead.

I can’t recommend it highly enough.

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January 29, 2020 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Best TV Couples

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

I narrowed down this week’s prompt from best Book/Movie/TV Couples to Best TV Couples. There are some mild spoilers for these shows in the rest of this post.

David and Patrick from Schitt's Creek standing in their store and kissing.

David and Patrick from Schitt’s Creek

If you haven’t started watching Schitt’s Creek yet, I highly recommend checking it out! The storyline follows a wealthy family who moves to a small town after losing all of their money.

David was the spoiled adult son of this family. Patrick’s childhood had been full of hard work and thrifty choices. That is, it was the total opposite of David’s experiences in many ways! And yet somehow these two characters complement each other beautifully.

Chidi and Eleanor from The Good Place hugging each other

Chidi and Eleanor from The Good Place 

One of the things I love the most about Chidi and Eleanor is how similar their personalities. They both have a tendency to over-think things and spend more time brooding over their choices than actually picking one.

Chidi showed these traits immediately. Eleanor was more subtle about it, but I chuckled as soon as I realized that both of them were dealing with the same flaw (even if it wasn’t always expressed in identical ways in their lives).

Mr. and Mrs. Kim from Kim's Convenience. He says "I see everything" and she replies, "yeah, me too" in this gif.

Mr. and Mrs. Kim from Kim’s Convenience

Kim’s Convenience has become my favourite Canadian sitcom over the past few years. Many shows focus on the early years of a romantic relationship when everything is brand new and exciting. The cool thing about Mr. and Mrs. Kim is that they’ve been together for at least 25 years by the time the audience first meets them.

It’s wonderful to see how their relationship has matured and grown over time.

 

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January 28, 2020 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Covers That Make Me Hungry

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Be warned: you may want to grab a snack before reading this post. I won’t be held responsible for any cravings these book covers might encourage.

On a more serious note, I chose these books based on their covers alone as I haven’t read any of them yet. If you’ve read them, I’d sure like to hear your thoughts on them!

Noah Can't Even by Simon James. Image on the cover is of a peeled banana.

1. Noah Can’t Even by Simon James Green

Hello Cupcake by Alan Richards and Karen Tack. Image on cover is of cupcakes whose frosting has been piped on to make them look like miniature poodles.

2. Hello, Cupcake by Alan Richardson and Karen Tack

The House of Rajani by Alon Hilu, Evan Fallenberg (Translator). Image on front is of oranges growing on an orange tree. There is a butterfly on orange at the top of the image.

3. The House of Rajani by Alon Hilu, Evan Fallenberg (Translator)

Everyday Food- Great Food Fast by Martha Stewart. Image on cover is of spaghetti with tomato sauce, cooked tomatoes, and shrimp.

4. Everyday Food: Great Food Fast by Martha Stewart

The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum book cover. Image on cover is of a bumble berry pie that does not have a top crust.

5. The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking byJeff Hertzberg and  Zoë François book cover. Image on cover is of a freshly baked loaf of bread.

6. Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking byJeff Hertzberg and  Zoë François

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Food Yoga- Nourishing the Soul by Paul Rodney Turner and Priya Vrata book cover. Image on cover is of many different vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, etc. all piled together.

7. Food Yoga: Nourishing the Soul by Paul Rodney Turner and Priya Vrata

The Adultery Diet by Eva Cassady book cover. Image on cover is of a box of nine chocolates.

8. The Adultery Diet by Eva Cassady

One Bowl: Simple Healthy Recipes for One by Stephanie Bostic. Book cover is of a bowl of hearty vegetable soup. There are two bread rolls, a lime, and a spoon sitting next to it.

9. One Bowl: Simple Healthy Recipes for One by Stephanie Bostic

Book cover for The Bite of Mango by Mariatu Kamara and Susan McClelland. Image on the cover is of someone holding a mango in their hands.

10. The Bite of Mango by Mariatu Kamara

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January 27, 2020 · 1:00 am

Endless Memories: A Review of The Deep

Book cover for The Deep by Rivers Solomon. Image on cover is of a mermaid swimming past a whale.

Title: The Deep

Author: Rivers Solomon

Publisher: Saga Press

Publication Date: 2019

Genres: Science Fiction, Afrofuturism, Contemporary, Historical

Length: 175 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 4 Stars

Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.

Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting.

Content warning: Death of a parent and death of a child. I will not be discussing these things in my review. The quotes below were taken from the book.

Some types of pain echo through many generations.

Yetu was an amazing protagonist. Her struggles with acting as the Historian for her community made perfect sense. That burden had been placed on her shoulders at a tender age, and it honestly wasn’t something she was prepared to handle. While I can’t go any further into her backstory without giving away spoilers, I appreciated all of the work that had clearly been put into describing her personality, why she was given this role, and how it affected her both mentally and physically.

“Living without detailed long-term memories allowed for spontaneity and lack of regret, but after a certain amount of time had passed, they needed more.”

One of the things that I wish the blurb had made clearer was how the Wanjinru processed memories, especially since the plot wasn’t shared in a chronological order. Their minds didn’t work exactly the same as a human mind does for reasons that I’ll leave for future readers to discover, so Yetu often needed to repeat things to the audience as she remembered them again or thought of a detail she hadn’t included before. I liked this device a lot, but it wasn’t something I was expecting when I started reading.

The character development was quite well done. This was even more impressive given how Yetu’s memory worked. It’s definitely not easy to show someone growing and changing when they forget certain details over time, but the author pulled it off beautifully.

“We are not Wanjiru if being Wanjiru means distancing ourselves from pain.”

I do wish this book had been longer so that more time could have been spent on the world-building. Yetu both experienced and remembered some amazing events, but she needed to spend so much time repeating certain memories and making sure they were told in the right order that she simply didn’t have as much time as she needed in order to explain those events the way I wish they’d been shared with the audience. Another 50-100 pages of writing would have given me the clues I needed.

“Forgetting was not the same as healing.”

This is also something that could easily be fixed with a sequel if the author ever decides to revisit all of the incredible characters she created here. My fingers are crossed that this might happen one day.

With that being said, the ending couldn’t have been written more beautifully. I adored the way all of the important loose ends of the storyline were tied together while still leaving room for either a sequel or lots of fodder for the the imaginations of everyone who reads it. 

I’ve decided to end this review with a link to the song referenced in the blurb. Comparing its version of events with what happened in the book was fascinating, especially since the song came first!  It does contain spoilers, so keep that in mind while deciding when to listen to it if you’re like me and prefer to avoid spoilers.

 

The Deep by Clipping

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January 23, 2020 · 1:00 am

Vintage Science Fiction Month: It’s a Bird

Vintage Science FictionVintage Science Fiction Blog Challenge badge. It shows a rocket ship against a red background. There is a bubble city in the background. month takes place every January, and has a few guidelines:

 – read, watch, listen to, or experience something science fiction / fantasy that was created in 1979 or earlier

 – talk about it online sometime in January

 – have fun

If any of my readers are also interested in participating this month, let Little Red Reviewer know about your posts if you’d like them to be included in her official roundups. 

This week I’m going to be talking about “It’s A Bird,” a three-minute, stop-motion animation film from 1930 that featured Charley Bowers and a metal bird that was capable of turning metal scraps into something incredible.

Harold L. Muller was the director of this film. Click here to watch it or check out the embedded version below. It is safe for viewers of all ages.

Caution – Major Spoilers Below

Think about all of the hours of work that went into creating this film! Every single frame of it had to be painstakingly recorded and then stitched together. There weren’t any computers, much less CGI, to make that job easier.

I loved the world building of this film. Charley was just as surprised as the audience was by the existence of a metal bird who ate metal and turned all of those scraps into a beautiful, white egg.

The fact that the egg hatched into a brand new car made me laugh! I was expecting another metal bird to start running around. Honestly, the only thing better than that was the parent-bird’s response when Charley said that he wanted to take the bird and start making a whole factory’s worth of new cars for them to sell.

I might have done the same thing if I were in his shoes. When you find yourself in a surreal situation, why not take it to its logical conclusions?

This is something I would love to see a sequel for. Where are the other metal birds, if they still exist or ever existed? Where did this metal bird come from? At what point does a car evolve into a bird in this universe? Or does every mechanical creature spawn offspring that look nothing at all like itself?

What a fun story it was at any rate. I’m glad I had a chance to blog about it for Vintage Science Fiction month.

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January 22, 2020 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: New Hobby I’m Trying

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Photography is my newest hobby. I picked it up last spring and have been dabbling in it ever since. January isn’t the best month for spending a lot of time outdoors taking pictures in Ontario, so I’ll share a few pictures I snapped last year when the weather was warmer.

Branch leaned up against a tree. The branch is covered in red leaves and propped up by twigs. Each one of the three arms of the branch is surrounded by red leaves. The red leaves are surrounded by yellow leaves.

This was a piece of environmental art I discovered at a local park last autumn. It was absolutely gorgeous! I only wish I knew who made it so I could credit them and thank them for creating it.

A winding path through a patch of autumn grass.

I liked the way this path provided a natural focal point for my photograph. The next time I shoot it, I’ll play around with how I frame the shot some more.

Painting of a robot's head. The head is filled with a geometric design that has all pieces connected by intersecting lines.

Toronto is filled with street art. Some of it is commissioned by the city, and other pieces just seem to randomly spring up. I think this might have been a commissioned piece. Either way, I like it.

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January 21, 2020 · 1:00 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Picturesque Reading Spaces

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

This week’s prompt was “The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf,” and it totally stumped me. I haven’t bought new books in ages, and I’ve already talked about the library books I’m hoping to read soon in a recent Top Ten Tuesday post.

Therefore, I’m going with an unrelated, but still bookish, topic for today: picturesque reading spots. I don’t know about you, but I find reading even more enjoyable if I can do it in a beautiful location. Here are just a few of the spots I’d love to read in.

Two chairs and a table carved out of large logs of wood. They're sitting in a small garden next to a stone house that is covered with wooden carvings of people and animals.

I would need a cushion for these chairs, but they look like a very restful place to sit and read.

A white chaise lounge. It has two pillows on it and is sitting next to a vase filled with dead branches.

This looks like a supremely comfortable reading spot. The minimalistic decor would also make it easier to focus on a difficult or long book.

Stone house overlooking a lake.

There’s something so soothing about large bodies of water. I’ve found that they’re often much prettier in person no matter how beautiful they are in a photo or video. There’s something about smelling that fresh water and possibly hearing it lap against the shore that makes it even more enticing.

A white bench sitting on a slab of concrete at the edge of a pine forest.

I love nature, but I also love having a clean and dry place to sit and read. This bench seems like it could offer the best of both worlds.

Two puppies sitting on a couch

Sometimes the weather dictates that one should read inside. These aren’t my pets, but I sure would love to snuggle with a couple of pets while reading. It sounds so cozy.

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January 20, 2020 · 1:00 am

My Review of the 30-Minute Cardio Latin Dance Workout

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and this post is in no way intended to give out medical advice. Please seek the advice of a qualified medical professional before beginning this or any other workout routine. 

In addition, I’m not being compensated for this post and have no affiliation with the creators. There is never affiliate marketing of any sort on my site.

About the 30-Minute Cardio Latin Dance Workout

This is a 30-minute dance workout. There are warmup and cooldown exercises included in it.

If you’ve never done a cardio dance workout routine before, I’d recommend either starting with Bipasha Basu’s 30-Minute Aerobic Dance Workout instead or embracing all of the modified moves that one of the dancers demonstrates for the audience if you’re up for a challenge. This routine is not intended for beginners in my opinion.

I’d recommend either wearing a supportive pair of shoes or putting down a yoga mat or other soft but non-slippery surface for all of the jumping you’re about to do. No other equipment is necessary.

30-Minute Cardio Latin Dance Workout 

My Review

It’s been a few months since I added this workout to my regular rotation, and I absolutely love it.

I had no experience with salsa or merengue dancing before trying this workout. If any of my followers do have experience with those dance styles, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this routine!

One of the best things about these styles of dance is that they repeat the same moves over and over again in various combinations and patterns. While it definitely took me time to get all of the moves down fairly accurately, it was nice to start to understand it right away.

If I didn’t have the exact pattern memorized yet, it was really easy to pick something similar and keep moving. This is something that I haven’t been able to do in every dance workout I’ve tried, so I definitely appreciated the fact that I was able to wing it a little in the beginning while I was still getting used to how everything fit together. That extra challenge was a small but important part of the reason why I stuck around after the first time I tried it.

Nicole Steen and other dancers in the Popsugar 30-minute Cardio Latin Dance VideoThe dancers in this video are energetic. This was especially true for Nicole Steen who was leading the routine. I couldn’t help but to smile at the jokes she cracked and the many techniques she used to keep the energy high in her backup dancers.

Dancing is one of those things that can easily perk up my mood, so the combination of getting to do one of my favourite forms of exercise with having such an upbeat instructor worked really well for me.

I also appreciated the fact that this routine can be done in a fairly small space. Yes, you move around a lot in it, but you’re not leaping from one corner of the room to the next if that makes sense. Instead, dancers tend to do a lot of bending, twisting, and shaking. My apartment is a tiny one, but I always had enough space to copy the dancers (once I figured out what to expect from them next!)

The modifications were also a nice touch. I had enough experience with other types of cardio-heavy styles of dancing that I didn’t end up using them, but it was reassuring to know that I could drop down to less intense moves if necessary. This also was a feature that convinced me to leave the door open for people who don’t have a lot of dance experience to give this a shot. With less twisting and jumping to worry about, picking up on the moves sure seems like it would be easier.

Honestly, I can’t recommend this workout highly enough. It’s a great deal of fun and something I’m planning to keep doing for the foreseeable future.

Previous Reviews of Free Youtube Workout Routines:

The Challenging Chair Workout 

Bipasha Basu’s 30-Minute Aerobic Dance Workout

Fitness Blender’s Brutal Butt & Thigh Workout

Fitness Blender’s Ab Blasting Interval Workout

Fitness Blender’s Toned, Lean Arms Workout 

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January 16, 2020 · 1:00 am

Vintage Science Fiction Month: Second Variety by Philip K. Dick

Vintage Science Fiction Blog Challenge badge. It shows a rocket ship against a red background. There is a bubble city in the background. Vintage Science Fiction month takes place every January, and has a few guidelines:

 – read, watch, listen to, or experience something science fiction / fantasy that was created in 1979 or earlier

 – talk about it online sometime in January

 – have fun

If any of my readers are also interested in participating this month, let Little Red Reviewer know about your posts if you’d like them to be included in her official roundups. 

Today I’m going to be blogging about “Second Variety,” a science fiction novelette by Philip K. Dick about what happened to the Earth and the few remaining humans on it after a nuclear war erupted between the Soviet Union and the United Nations.  This tale was originally published in 1953, but many of the themes in it still feel fresh nearly 70 years later.

Click here to read “Second Variety” for free. Everything after this sentence and in the tags of this post contains spoilers for this story, so reader beware! 

Second Variety by Philip K. Dick book cover. Image on cover is of a stylized, human-shaped flame holding the Earth. The first thing that grabbed my imagination when I was reading this tale had to do with the destruction of the natural environment. There was so much devastation everywhere the characters looked.

It briefly reminded me of the massive forest fires currently burning in Australia. Just like in our world, the lion’s share of the suffering was shouldered by innocent living beings – human and otherwise – that were never given a choice in the matter. It was utterly unfair.

While this is a story about war, it’s not a war story. The biggest battles have long-since happened by the time we meet the main characters, and the addition of a new enemy has already thrown both sides off-kilter. The exhaustion of fighting an enemy that never needs to sleep or fulfill other human needs also added a new twist to this post-apocalyptic world.

There were actually times when I felt a little sorry for the robots. Yes, they were attacking humans…but they weren’t the ones responsible for causing such severe environmental damage that Europe and vast swaths of North America were no longer able to grow any food at all. They were just following the orders they’d been given by their creators.

With that being said, I still loved the plot twists involving the robots and what they were capable of doing. They technically weren’t alive, but they sure acted like it. Not only did they repair themselves when broken, they paid close attention to what was left of human culture and looked for any weaknesses they could find and take advantage of. That’s not something I’d normally expect from a robot!

As someone who has read a ton of post-apocalyptic and robotic science fiction, I figured out where this story would probably end up pretty early on. That isn’t a criticism of the piece, though. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of other authors were influenced by Mr. Dick’s writing style kind of like modern authors have written things that echo the Harry Potter series or various Margaret Atwood novels.

This repetition and evolution of ideas is common in all genres. It will be interesting to see if any of my fellow scifi fans had the same reaction to this story, especially where the ending is concerned.

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January 15, 2020 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books I Can’t Wait to Read in 2020

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

There are plenty of books I’m curious about, but I can think of only one upcoming release that genuinely excites me at this point. (The year is still young, so this will almost certainly change over time!)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins book cover. Image on cover is of a gold mocking jay sitting on a branch. There is a target sign behind it.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Hunger Games Prequel) by Suzanne Collins.

I’m thinking about rereading the Hunger Games trilogy before the prequel comes out in May. Here’s hoping that the prequel is well done and answers everyone’s questions about how Panem was created in the first place.

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