24 | November | 2013 | An Autobiography in Random Chapters

In which The Author makes a list

‘Missing, presumed lost’ could easily be a reference to yesterday’s contribution to NaBloPoMo, but I’m afraid it isn’t. I had to miss a day, partly because I couldn’t access my blog in Aberdare Library (again!) That’s four days in a row – I’m now absolutely convinced that it’s been ‘got at’ by someone in Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC (see Enemy Action.)

The other reason why I missed a day is because I couldn’t be bothered to go to the pub last night. In the bar, they’d probably have had The X Factor or some similar crap on the TV. In the lounge, Malcolm X was doing his thing (see Adventures in the Book Trade (Part 5.) Either way, there’d have been a definite lack of quiet corners in which I could hide away and concentrate on the blog. Instead, I stayed in and watched a couple of DVDs, then went to bed at about midnight and read a couple of chapters of a book before trying to get to sleep.

I started my current book at bedtime a few days ago, after Wayne B. posted a link on Facebook. He’d picked up a reference to a new SF series on TV, called Almost Human. I’d read a little bit about it online already, and it sounds quite intriguing – in the near future, human police officers team up with androids to fight crime. I pointed out that (as with a great deal of SF) the idea wasn’t a new one. Isaac Asimov wrote two novels in the 1950s – The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun – which revolved around a similar partnership. As I’d only just finished one book, it occurred to me that I hadn’t read Asimov’s books since I was in school. I was fairly sure that the battered old Panther paperbacks would be on my shelves, so when I got home I had a look.

For some reason, I’ve only got The Naked Sun. I know for a fact I had both books back in the day, but there’s no sign of The Caves of Steel in my collection. I haven’t searched the cupboard in my bedroom thoroughly yet, but it certainly isn’t among the rest of Dr Asimov’s books on the shelves in my front room.

I’ve lent out a great many books over the years, and I’ve had to write a fair proportion of them off altogether. It’ll take a number of visits to Amazon and/or Ebay, and cost me a fair bit of money, to replace the missing items. Shortly after I started a blog, I was surprised by the unexpected appearance of one of them (in a different edition) in the post (see A Mysterious Book.) A few days later, Maria put her hand up to that one. I’ve got a fair idea where some of them were when they were last seen, but even that’s no guarantee that they’re still there. People move house and things get mislaid.

To try and get around this problem, I’ve made some little ‘Cosmic Tigger Lending Library’ stickers on my printer. They get attached to the front cover and spine of any book that leaves my house, so at least the borrower knows where they belong. So far, so good…

I’ve compiled a list (from memory) of the missing items from the Cosmic Tigger Lending Library. It’s in no particular order, it probably isn’t complete, and it’s as much for my benefit as to try and jog the memories of my friends who might feel a pang of guilt on reading this. At worst, I can think of it as a shopping list for my occasional visits to second-hand shops and online dealers. Here goes: