People Reading

What I'm reading

What I'm reading

From January 2014 to most recent: lots of New Yorker fiction that I caught up on – I especially loved The Christmas Miracle, by Rebecca Curtis; Life of Pi, by Yann Martel; The Help, by Kathryn Stockett; The Heart of a Dog, by Mikhail Bulgakov; Haruki Murakami's 1Q84; Bel Canto and The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett; the choreographer Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit (intermittently); The Remains of the Day and The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro; State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett; The Mystic Masseur, by the British/Trinidadian author, V.S. Naipaul; Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro; Sula, by Toni Morrison; two Swedish crime novels I read (in English) while in Sweden: Nephilim, by Åsa Schwarz & Killer's Art, by Mari Jungstedt; The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson; Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell, which my sister and friend, Colleen, recommended; Run, by Ann Patchett; When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro; The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World History, by Timothy C. Hall; The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell (only half because the ebook I was reading expired- but it was a re-read); The Circle, by Dave Eggers; Our Hotel In Bali: How two young Americans made a dream come true by opening one of the first Balinese tourist hotels on Kuta Beach in the 1930s, by Louise Koke (which I got from the Cannes free library on the beach, Pages à la plage); Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, by Madhur Jaffrey (from cover to cover - I was craving a kitchen, while traveling); Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami; The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt; The Corsican Caper, by Peter Mayle (on audio book); Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (on audio book); The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. (Starting a new year, 2015) Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella; Shaking out the Dead, by K.M. Cholewa; The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery; English teaching text books and New Yorker fiction; Divergent and Insurgent, by Veronica Roth; The Wolf Gift, by Anne Rice; and My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgård. --- I've been lazy for a long time about posting the books I've read lately. I'm not going to go back in time, but today (Feb 5, 2017) I just finished listening to Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett. Right before that I was on a Kim Stanley Robinson audio book kick and listened to Aurora and Shaman.

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July 8, 2019, Monday evening -- Reading Shawn Achor

In the Financial District

He is reading The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work. Believe it or not, it was recommended by his employer.

He enjoys reading biographies, mostly biographies about fellow Brazilians and entrepreneurs. Recently he read a biography by Jack Welch, who was a General Electric CEO. Wikipedia says GE's value rose 4,000% while he was there.

June 30, 2019, Sunday afternoon -- Reading Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

At a cafe in the Mission District

He is reading Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide, by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. He's a fan of the authors' podcast.

His favorite book is 1984, by George Orwell. He's read it about once every five years for the past 25 years or so. Every time he reads it, it speaks to him in a different way.

Something else good he's read recently is the Locke and Key comic book series, illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez and written by Joe Hill, who is Stephen King's son.

June 24, 2019, Monday morning, Reading Viktor E. Frankl

In the Financial District

He is reading Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl. It was recommended by a friend.
If he had to pick a favorite book, it might be the Harry Potter series. It was the first series he read growing up.

In August, about 2 years ago I photographed another reader who was also reading Man's Search for Meaning, which compelled me to read the book. I really enjoyed it. It amazed me how strong people can be when they have purpose in their lives.

June 22, 2019, Saturday afternoon -- Reading James Salter

In the sculpture garden at the SFMOMA

She is reading A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter. She found it at McNally Jackson bookstore in New York City and and bought it based on the description on the back cover, which says it's set in Provincial France in the 1960s and is about a Yale dropout and a French shopgirl. The last line of the blurb, which caught her eye says,"Yet what is really at stake is not merely sex but our need to tell stories about love, and to judge our own amorous successes and failures through the lens of other peoples' lives."

She reads a lot so it's hard to name a favorite author, but a couple of her favorites are Tom Robbins and Kurt Vonnegut.

June 16, 2019, Sunday afternoon -- Reading Guy Maupassant (in Korean)

At the rock climbing gym

She is reading The Necklace, published in 1884 by the French author, Guy Maupassant, translated into Korean. She read it when she was about 10 or 12 years old and is re-reading it. She said it's a famous story.

Her favorite book is 채식주의자 or The Vegetarian, by the Korean author Han Kang. It has been translated into English, but she read it in the Korean. It's about a woman who becomes a vegetarian. It won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.

May 24, 2019, Friday evening -- Reading Mercedes Lackey

Waiting for the bus in the Mission District

He is reading Winds of Fury, by Mercedes Lackey. He received it as a gift from his friends Nancy and Matt when he was 12 years old and has read it many times since. They gave him 2 of the 3 books in the Valdemar: Mage Winds trilogy, thinking he'd like them because they saw the cover of another Mercedes Lackey book he was reading called Black Gryphon, which he got at a drug store because his favorite mythical creature was a gryphon and he had never seen a book about a gryphon.

His favorite authors are Mercedes Lackey, J.D. Robb, Dan Brown, Stephen R. Lawhead.

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1a37g2ISV2BH8mb-ctffLVkJexrcwT7TP

May 18, 2019, Saturday morning -- Reading Kurt Vonnegut

At the laundromat

He is reading Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut.
I photographed him earlier this year, in January, sitting in this exact same spot. He had said that he had a resolution to read more and from different genres and he's keeping to it. He schedules time to read on his calendar, about 5 hours a week including laundry time. Right now he's taking a break with Vonnegut while working his way through Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes and Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.

May 14, 2019, Tuesday evening -- Reading Brad Meltzer

On a lovely evening, before the days of out-of-season rain hit us

She is reading The Escape Artist, by Brad Meltzer. When I explained my blog and asked if I could take her photo she expressed surprise that I'd want to document the reading of this book. She called it "brain candy." I had the same conversation a few years ago when I'd photographed another reader who worked as a book dealer, and felt that her book wasn't high brow enough. But isn't that the highest compliment to an author and the best thing for readers themselves, to have created something enjoyable or to be engrossed in something enjoyable? Personally, above all other reasons, that's why I read.

Her favorite author is Stephen King.

May 1, 2019, Wednesday afternoon -- Reading Paula Hawkins

In North Beach

She is reading Escrito En El Agua, by Paula Hawkins. Her sister loaned it to her when she was visiting her back home in Colombia two months ago and she just remembered she had it.

Her favorite author is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Something good she read recently was Ficciones, a collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, which was very deep, but very nice.

April 13, 2018, Saturday evening -- Reading Rachel Cusk

At Gibson's, downtown

She is reading Kudos, by Rachel Cusk. She heard the author read in Berkeley not too long ago and really enjoys her writing.

Something else good she read recently was Dreyer's English, by Benjamin Dreyer, a humorous book about the English language.

April 4, 2019, Thursday evening -- Reading Robert Pinsky

At Adobe Bookstore in the Mission District

He is reading The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide, by Robert Pinsky. It was sitting next to the register, a place where the book store features books they think will sell well. He's only just begun it, but is liking it. He wants to read more poetry and feels this is a good start.

His favorite authors right now are Haruki Murakami, for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Ken Liu, for a short story that made him cry on a bus on his way to work called The Paper Menagerie; and Jane Jacobs, for The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

March 28, 2019, Thursday evening -- Reading Indu Sundaresan

In the Mission District

She is reading The Twentieth Wife, by Indu Sundaresan. It's the first book of a historical fiction trilogy. She was originally drawn to the book for its cover and now has read the whole trilogy and is reading this book for the second time. It's about the last wife of an Emperor in India who had a lot of influence and set policy and shaped the course of history.

She reads a lot of fantasy, and especially liked Phillip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. She also really liked Lilac Girls, by Martha Hall Kelly, a historical fiction novel which is set in World War II and is about the lives of three women.

March 25, 2019, Monday afternoon -- Reading Ernest Hemingway

At the SFMOMA

She is reading The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway. She's never read anything by Ernest Hemingway and found this at the library.

Her favorite author is Toni Morrison. She read The Bluest Eye and is reading Sula now.

March 18, 2019, Monday afternoon -- Reading bell hooks

At Union Square

He is reading All About Love, by bell hooks. His girlfriend gave him the book for Valentine's Day. They both heard the author, who is a well known feminist and activist, read at San Francisco State University.

His favorite author is Cormac McCarthy, and of Cormac McCarthy's books his favorite is Blood Meridian, which he likes for its graphic illustration and chaos of the Wild West.

March 15, 2019, Friday afternoon -- Reading Carol S. Dweck

At the BART Station

He is walking to work and reading Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, by Carol S. Dweck.

March 10, 2019, Sunday afternoon -- Reading Alex Hutchinson

At a cafe in the Mission District

She is reading Endure: Mind, Body and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, by Alex Hutchinson. She is a distance runner and while she's down with an injury, she's working on her mental game for endurance running. She ran the 10k and 5k in college.

Other running books she's read are Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery, by Christie Aschwanden, and Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory, by Deena Kastor -- who has the American record in the marathon -- and Michelle Hamilton.

She doesn't have a favorite book or author, but she does really like Haruki Murakami.

March 1, 2019, Friday evening -- Reading Barbara Kingsolver

On the BART platform

He is reading Pigs in Heaven, by Barbara Kingsolver, which he found in one of those Little Free Library houses in Berkeley. He is a teacher and he teaches his students The Bean Trees, which this book is the sequel of, and he had read everything by Barbara Kingsolver except for this book.

His favorite book is Watership Down, by Richard Adams. His favorite living author is Cormac McCarthy and his favorite deceased author is Carlos Casteneda.

February 24, 2019, Sunday afternoon -- Reading Michael Schiavo

In the Mission District

He is reading Terri: The Truth, by Michael Schiavo. He doesn't have a favorite author, but instead just reads books when they come his way.

February 3, 2019, Sunday afternoon -- Reading Jeffrey Eugenides

At a cafe in the Mission District

She is reading Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides. It was a gift from her sister-in-law, who got everyone books for Christmas. She got lucky that she got a book she wanted to read.

Something good she read recently was Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a book of essays by Joan Didion. She liked it because it was fun to see a portrait of San Francisco.

February 3, 2019, Sunday afternoon -- Reading Tana French

At a cafe in the Mission District

She is just getting started reading The Witch Elm, by Tana French. It's a murder mystery. She loves this author and is happy to have time to read. It's the first book she's read in a while.

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I started this blog in 2006 as an exploration of literary San Francisco and daily affirmation that people still read. I was working on a novel and needed encouragement.

After interviewing over 1,200 readers, I've discovered the beauty and rarity of a given book being read at a given time, instead of, say, packed away in a box somewhere. I've also discovered that I've not only been chronicling the popularity of books, but also the diversity of individuals. What goes on inside our minds is evidenced by and influenced by what we are reading, have read, and the inner dialogs we have with authors.

In 2007, I took a Greyhound bus trip to all the lower-48 states and took photos of readers in each of them: DogEaredUSA. Following that, about a year later, I spent 48-hours in Oahu photographing readers. I found about 46: Readers in Oahu.

The pictures to your left are taken in San Francisco, unless I say otherwise.

I get rejected about 20% of the time and I respect the privacy of people who do not want to be on this site.

I invite you to search the blog (see upper left corner) for your favorite books so you can see who else likes to read what you do. It always makes me happy when I interview completely different looking people who have the same favorite books.

Please let me know if I've made a mistake or if you have something to add. You can also email me directly at sonya.worthy@gmail.com.