We all have our guilty pleasures. I’ll get mine out into the open now. Firstly, I like Star Trek. Not so much Voyager or Enterprise. But I really liked the original series and The Next Generation and even Deep Space Nine. Yes, they’re pop pabulum. But they’re solid stories.

By the way, George Takei’s autobiography, To the Stars, I’ve read and recommend. His story begins with his boyhood experiences as a U.S. citizen in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, a challenging account apropos to the modern political climate. It moved me so much, I almost couldn’t go on. But I did, reliving with him his adolescence, his education as an architect, his passion as a struggling actor, his political activism. The book ends with a stirring tribute to Gene Roddenberry. I was sorry to put it down. By the way, that’s an aside, not a guilty pleasure.

Did I mention his work with Star Trek? Oh yeah, there’s that, too.

Back to guilty pleasures. What is a guilty pleasure? It’s something I like that I couldn’t recommend to someone else. In fact, I’m embarassed even to admit that I like it. Buck Rogers, too. I liked Buck Rogers. I don’t know why. I also really enjoyed the movie Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Well, I guess I could recommend that, with qualifications. But for a sci-fi mystery, it has a pretty stupid plot. And in books, Circle of Gold by Diana Palmer, a corny little Silhouette Romance® I got free from eHarlequin.com.

-TimK