Saturday, August 16, 2008

Mostly librarians SF/F complete list of books discussed

I've just published a Google spreadsheet of the books that have been discussed since mid-1996 of our nameless science fiction and fantasy book club. I've been a member of the group since late 1998. I'm hoping other members of the group will add comments. Annotations came from the NLS (National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped) catalog, a nice source for brief descriptions of books.

For your reading pleasure: The list Note, there are two tabs/pages as there is a limit of 100 rows per tab.

Memory check with the help of serendipity

My sister has been concerned about my mother's memory so when I visited my folks last weekend I observed her with that in mind.

My folks had just moved from one senior independent living apartment complex to another three days earlier. My mom spoke of the manager of the old place, how Ms. Manager choses favorites of the residents and had already found a new favorite to replace my parents. The newly blessed resident became that because her son is a member of a rock band and he came by to have lunch with her. I asked my mom (who has never had an interest in anything musical after the Tijuana Brass stopped recording) if she knew the name of the band or the band member's name. She said she thought it was something like Eagle. "The Eagles?" we asked her, they are pretty big. Was the son about our age or very young? About your age she said, but long hair. She thought his name was something like Schmit. I really don't know rock music and S.O. couldn't remember the band members names so we just filed it away as a maybe true, maybe confused story.

The next day I was at my athletic club and walked by the magazine rack. Usually it just has old issues of Time magazine and various trade journals left by other members. This time, front and center, was an issue of Rollingstone and who should be on the cover, you guessed it, The Eagles. One bandmember's name sure enough is Timothy Schmit. Guess my mother's short-term memory is pretty good. Her long-term memory is legendary, so I'm not concerned about memory issues.