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My Christmas Vacation-The Books

Maybe this topic is a stretch to be added to my series but I finished two books a couple days ago that I was reading over vacation so I think it counts. First, I finished Star Trek: Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. Written between Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact, it tels the story of warp drive developer, Zephram Cochrane filling in the blanks between when he broke the warp barrier, him disappearing in space, and then being discovered on a distant planet by Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy. It further allows him to encounter Picard's crew as well. I realize how complicated this may sound but it ties together well. Because it was written before First Contact came out some of the events taking place in Cochrane's own time contradict what is now cannon such as how he developed the drive but that's a very small portion of the book so it really can be overlooked. I was thinking that Generations would be the movie that would really screw things up so it's good that waited until after that one... I thought it was kind of interesting they used the appearance of Sarek, Spock's father, to hold the story together. The TOS portion takes place after "Journey to Babel" and the TNG portion takes place after "Sarek."

The same day, I finished reading Tess Gerritsen's latest: The Bone Garden. Such a great book. Taking a break from her current book series, she tels a story that switches back and forth from the present to 1830. The present does include a cameo by Dr. Maura Isles but this is a completely different book. Honestly, I like this and miss that element of her books when she started out at Pocket Books. Her next book will return to the series, apparently. The past features Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.; the famed physician not his son the judge, investigating a serial killer. What I love best about Gerritsen's books is when she uses places I've been or at least heard of. There was a reference here to the town where I had my internship and another to a hospital I had minor surgery at years ago. My one quibble with this book is that the transitions between past and present weren't always good. Some were like, "Let's go to the past now..." As with all her books, there was a twist I really didn't expect. And, no, it doesn't have to do with the killer...

I'm getting kind of tired writing about movies but I'm compelled to share the latest fare with you all. We will begin with The Reaping with Hillary Swank who, incidentally, has never looked more attractive but then I haven't seen her in a anything where she was allowed to be feminine since her debut in The Next Karate Kid. I'm pretty sure this was her first movie after winning her second Academy Award which, if you watch this movie, will have you scratching your head. I can't really go into detail about how I really feel about this movie without ruining the movie but let me just say that I've seen more believable movies on Lifetime...

Next, we watched Rush Hour 3. Which, oddly perhaps, was more believable and more entertaining. If you've seen the first two movies, or any movie with Jackie Chan for that matter, you pretty much know what to expect here. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Turning back to TV movies, we watched Home By Christmas with Linda Hamilton. This was the best Lifetime movie I have ever seen in my life. Since the majority of my audience is female, I have no qualms recommending it.

We finished up the night with Santa Jr. with Lauren Holly. It was pretty good but very flawed and needed a rewrite if you ask me...

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