I'll take "Vulcan Love Slave" over "Burning Hearts of Qo'noS" any day*

 Or, Vpon her flew the flie and ſuckt her ſweet**

 Here we are with the first book post of 2016.

1. Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White

 I bought this book to read to Babyzilla when she comes to stay, but realised that I hadn't actually read it myself (or if I have, I can't remember). I've seen the film though, but that was decades ago. 
 I was struck by how useless and selfish Wilbur appears to be, and had to keep reminding myself that Charlotte considers him her best friend, so he can't be completely rubbish. Charlotte's inevitable death was very sad but the way she died confused me as it didn't happen like I thought it did. You see, before I read this book I'd recently watched Blade Runner, and there's a scene in which Rachel is telling Deckard of a memory she has when she was a little girl. She remembered watching a spider build a web outside her window and lay some eggs in it, and when the eggs hatched, the baby spiders ate their mother. I managed to mix up my own memories and was expecting Charlotte to be eaten by her kids!

2. Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories,
 by Nichelle Nichols

  The first non-fiction book of the year, and a wonderful read. It has been many years since I first read this, so it felt like I was reading anew. This biography tells of the obstacles Nichelle overcame during her life, beginning with a run-in with Al Capone before she was even born! Add in the struggles of equality being a black, female performer in the 1950s, 60s and 70s (she started out as a dancer and singer), and then her work with NASA to recruit women and minorities into the space program, and you have a very telling look at a different time. Sadly, not all of the problems Nichelle experienced are gone from our world today.

3. Mission Gamma: This Gray Spirit (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine),
 by Heather Jarman

 Continuing last year's DS9 relaunch re-read with this, the second book in the Mission Gamma series which is set in the year 2376 - in what would have been DS9's eighth season if it had continued on TV.

* Post title from page 4.

4. Caltha Poetarum: or, The Bumble Bee,
 by T. Cutwode (Tailboys Dymoke)

 I'm not one for poetry, but when I found out that this was one of the books censored in The Bishops' Ban of 1599, I thought I'd give it a go. Besides, it's about a bumblebee (amongst other things), so, I thought, how could this possibly have got onto the banned list? Well, nearly a third of the way through, it mentions witchcraft and gin (as you can see from the excerpt below):

Verse 78

To Caltha is the craftie Spyder gone,
& weaueth there a witching web (god wot)
With ſubtle ſlender thrids and many a one,
where if thou goeſt, thy chance is to be got,
What Flye ſoeuer comes eſcapes it not:
And let him toyle to come out of his gin,
The more he ſtriues, the ſurer is he in.

 Verses 108 and 109 describe, in florid detail, the resemblence of the mandrake root to the male form. An extremely well endowed male form, at that! And verse 142 seems to describe a man made from a bee with morning wood. So, perhaps, it was no wonder this was banned...?

For the curious, one can read the entirety of this poem (all 180-odd verses) online (GoogleBooks etc). But, beware the u's maskerading as v's, the v's pretending to be u's, the line over vowels that saves one from having an n or m next, plus that dastardly long s: ſ. It took me a little while to get back into the swing of things - after all, it's been fourhundred-odd years since I've ſpoken like thys!

** alternate title from the first line of verse 60 (because it almost says "fuckt". Hee!)

5. Mission Gamma: Cathedral (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine),
 by Andy Mangels and Michael Martin

 As you may have already guessed, this is the third book in the Mission Gamma series, and the follow up to This Gray Spirit (above).