A New Book Discussion Group

I haven't spent much time hanging out with the Bay Area fannish community. I find it difficult to get plugged into fandom for a variety of reasons: Everyone in fannish groups knows each other pretty well and I feel like something of an outsider. Their relationships are based on the fact that they've known each other for a while, and don't tend to allow a lot of openings for new people to join in. Plus I have this stubborn expectation that science fiction fandom ought to involve a strong science fiction component, which - unless you're actually at a convention - it generally doesn't.

This party was pretty fun. It was being thrown (I understand) for a couple from Britain who are in the area while travelling around after the conventions in Seattle over the last two weekends. It turns out that Maureen, one half of the couple, is in Turbo-APA, and that we overlapped for about eight months or so before I dropped out. I managed to (1) forget this fact until reminded, and (2) confuse her with another British fan whom I met in Madison several years ago. (Though, to be fair, I think my confusion is because each of them visited Madison while I was there and had parties thrown for their visit by the same people. Or, maybe my memory's just going...)

Anyway, Maureen turned out to be a terrific conversationalist, and talking with her and another woman in local fandom whom I'd previously met - Karen - were among the high points of the evening. I also chatted with a few other people whom I don't remember ever meeting before. So all-in-all it was a fun time. I felt like I was "about average" at my social skills on this evening, not feeling particularly witty, but not behaving like a clod, either. I can never tell, although at least people never seem to run away screaming...

On returning to La Residencia Huntzinger it turns out that Lucy had also baked an apple pie. Never one to turn away sweet pastries, I came in to have a piece. We generally agreed that the crust was a bit doughy, but overall it's pie, which is a good thing.

I spent most of today puttering around and feeling glum. I'm starting to realize that this is the same sort of glum feeling that I felt many times in Madison, which usually seems to crop up when I don't have any plans for the day, I have trouble motivating myself to get out of bed, I don't want to hang around the house, but I don't have any particular motivation to go out anywhere. I feel like I'm less and less content spending my time by myself.

But I did manage to pull myself out of it in the evening to go to the SF book discussion group at Keplers in Menlo Park. I haven't been to a book discussion since I moved away from Madison, so I figured I'd give this one a try. They were reading two early Lois McMaster Bujold novels, Shards of Honor and Barrayar, so I pulled out my copy of the book containing those two novels and skimmed through it this afternoon to refresh my memory.

The group was small - four of us; apparently they've had other people rotating in and out, but don't have a large core of people. But other than that it was pretty much what I expect from a discussion group, as we'd all read the book and had a fairly lively discussion. I was the only one who had read the rest of the series starting with these books, although one other fellow had read a few of the later books. The only downside I think is that they seem to be reading a number of "major" SF works and not so many less-well-known books, or brand new books. But if I continue going (and I'll certainly go back next month, when they're doing Neil Gaiman's Stardust) I'll see if I can lobby to change that some.

'Course, I didn't get a start on my taxes, like I wanted to this weekend. Oh, well...

Forum: How adept are you at socializing at parties?