Reading Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975, by Alice Echols at Ananda Fuara, a vegetarian restaurant near Civic Center.
She's just moved and, while paring down her books, mostly about social movements, she rediscovered this one. She's read it many times before. Another great book she rediscovered from her shelves: The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968, by George Katsiaficas.
She likes to read these books on social movements not because they provide answers, but because they reflect on current issues. These issues are emerging -- health care, child care, sexuality. It's really important to understand that things aren't fixed in place and you don't have to accept things the way they are, she said.
Another favorite -- Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners, by James Nardi. She's a gardener.
(picture of reader in front of lovely blue wall, flowers, and waterfall inset into wall)
Pictures soon to follow.
Upon returning from Mexico I realized I'd left my camera on the last leg of the journey -- the BART train between the airport and home -- and today, though I was able to get a loaner camera, the internet on my house is down and here, at the library, I am without the right cable to connect camera to laptop.
November 30, Monday afternoon -- Reading Alice Echols
Neglectful posting
I have just returned from a writing retreat at a resort in Mexico. I didn't photograph any readers; however, now, after churning out many pages of manuscript, I really need to, again, appreciate the act of reading. I wrote a lot.
When I wasn't writing I would swim or sit in the jacuzzi. The jacuzzi was a small, contained space, good for intimate conversations. There, I got to talk about my people reading project. One night I was leaning my tired neck back, looking up into the palmtrees and listening to a Mexican woman complain about how horrible it was that her travel agent booked her a trip in "gringolandia." It was so bad she switched to the hotel I was at.
You don't just hear the word "gringolandia" without laughing. I cracked up. She cracked up. We became friends. We got to talking about life, the universe, and my blog and she called her husband over, got him to give her his cell phone, and called their son in his hotel room. "My son reads always," she told me, the gringo, in English.
While hot water jets blasted us in the back and she quite expertly demolished a whole glass of Tequila, we talked back and forth, she fielding questions to her son, me speaking in Spanish, she in English, the son in Spanish, though she wouldn't let me talk to him. The son's favorites: everything by Paulo Coelho, because he likes the messages in the books, and Alexandre Dumas -- why, I couldn't figure out, though, I suppose there is no explanation necessary.
On my way home from the trip I had excellent book karma. One row over was a man just about to finish Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright - Sided. This is the book my book group has chosen for November. A half hour before we landed we conducted a transaction: he sold it to me for ten bucks. His wife was carrying a really nice woven picnic basket. When we were unboarding I offered her another ten bucks for it, but she didn't think that was as funny as I did. The thing about a book, though, is that it's a pleasure to share it.
Thanks for reading. I plan on posting more frequently now.
October 14, Wednesday night -- Reading Tom Corwin
In front of city hall
after an evening honoring Bay Area author, Amy Tan
(said author + dog + tambourine)
Sitting at the wheel of his Bookmobile, after all the revelry -- that is, the greats of San Francisco literature, up on stage at a Litquake event, roasting the author with stories about her generosity as well as habits such as using remote controls through ziplock bags.
In this picture, author Tom Corwin, and thinker-upper of bookmobiletravels.com, winding down after the event....
I had never been in a bookmobile before, though, have wanted to since visiting New Orleans and hearing about their temporary library projects, and, even more, since my sister gave me this story to read, by Audrey Niffeneger: The Night Bookmobile, which was really really good. It might make you cry.
In real life, Tom Corwin does not read and drive at the same time. And neither will the authors who will drive the bookmobile around the country, doing sort of what I'm doing with my blog -- interviewing people about the books that touch them. In exchange, he will invite them to take digital and print titles from the bookmobile library.
The last book he read was digital -- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. He read this on his iPhone with a Kindle application, in sepia tones and serif type, at night, in bed. And, he liked it.
October 8, Thursday evening -- Reading Georges Perec
At We Be Sushi in the Mission District, one of his favorite lunch spots
Reading Les Choses, by Georges Perec. He enjoys French literature. Next up -- something by Simone de Beauvoir.
Thursday, October 1 -- Reading Alexandra Day
On Mission Street, while her mother sells Halloween costumes
Reading Carl's Birthday, by Alexandra Day.
Friday, September 25 -- Reading Barack Obama
At the Batter Bakery shop at Kearny and California Street
Reading The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama. Lately she's been reading political books. What? -- I can't remember! I wrote it all down but left the card at home and I am not typing this up at home. Hmmm. Update later.
Favorite book -- Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger.
The bakery -- it just got featured in a book called _____ about women entrepreneurs. Again, title of the book is in my notes.....
Saturday, September 19 -- Reading Vargas Vila
At the corner of 24th Street and Mission
Reading La Republica Romana, by Vargas Vila.
We bonded. I asked him where he gets his books (I'd photographed him here before and he's always reading.) and he said, "la biblioteca." He wasn't quite sure I understood, but when I pulled my library card out of my wallet to show him that, yes, I did understand, and I had a card, too....it was a very nice feeling.
Saturday, September 19 -- Reading Amanda McCall and Ben Schwartz
At Urban Outfitters near Union Square
Reading Breaking Bad News With Baby Animals, by Amanda McCall and Ben Schwartz.
It's just funny when a baby cat (kitten, I guess) tells you, "you don't matter," or a piglet, staring blandly at the camera announces: "I'm banging your wife."
Favorite book -- The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne. 
September 5, Saturday evening -- Reading or, rather, enjoying the presence of, a medical dictionary
On Valencia Street after finding this huge leather-bound medical dictionary abandoned beneath a mailbox
Her favorite book -- The Glass Bead Game (or Magister Ludi), by Hermann Hesse.
His favorite book -- The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway. He has lived in Northern Spain near where part of the story is set and has experienced relationships similar to those in the story.
September 1, Tuesday morning -- Reading Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
On the Geary bus heading towards downtown
Reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Two of her friends recommended it, one of whom met Mary Ann Shaffer at Book Passage bookstore a couple years ago. The literary and potato peel society -- what?! -- was a fabrication made up for the benefit of Nazi occupiers, by drunk farmers and fishermen after curfew.
Recently she read Shantaram, a novel sort of based on the author's life -- Gregory David Roberts. It's her new favorite book. The story, she explained, is vivid and transportive. It's about an Australian bank robber/heroin addict who escapes from prison and goes to India.
If she were to write her own book, it'd be an oddysey of personal growth. After her father passed away she was an AMIGOS volunteer in Paraguay. 
August 31, Monday afternoon -- Reading Marcial Lafuente
At 24th and Mission Street in the Mission District
Reading El Idolo de Santa Fe. He reads a lot of Westerns written by Marcial Lafuente, which he buys in a shop on 23rd Street between Capp and Mission. In his bag he showed me that he had about ten of them. He gave me one, entitled Consecuencias Tragicas, with, on the cover, a picture of one cowboy tending to the wounds of another cowboy. I refused at first but accepted. I'm trying to learn Spanish better and the book is perfect. The first sentence: A medida que llegaban los vaqueros cerca de donde estaba el carro cocina, se dejaban caer en el suelo boca arriba.... This says something about cowboys hanging around the cooking car? I am visualizing men with string ties hanging around a Mission taco truck, but that doesn't jive with the cover. I think I'm going to need a dictionary.
Today is the three year anniversary of my blog. On August 11th, 2006 I photographed my then thirteen year-old brother (who, at that time was shorter than me) reading in the airport instead of saying goodbye to me at the end of a trip home to Montana. On August 31, 2006, though, I photographed my first non-family reader, on BART, on his way to yoga class in the Mission, reading Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner.
August 27, Thursday afternoon -- Reading Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D.
At a coffee shop in the financial district. 
Reading Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier.
I like that there is a science of gratitude!
A favorite right now -- The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream, by Andrea Rock.
August 26, Wednesday night -- Reading Anton Myrer
In front of Dog Eared Books on Valencia Street
Reading Once an Eagle, by Anton Myrer, which he stole from the outdoor book bin. He enjoys books about war.
A favorite -- the Snopes trilogy --The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion. It's great, he said, if you can read Faulkner. Some people can't. He grew up in the South though and is used to the way Faulkner writes.
He is a writer himself and is working on a collection of short stories and two screen plays. He has no computer -- it would get stolen -- and he sometimes writes things down on paper so he can share them, but mostly he works on them in his head -- for now. He used to be part of a screen writing group in Sacramento called Writers Block.
August 17, Monday afternoon -- Reading Curtis Sittenfeld
Waiting for his next messenger pick-up. Lately he's able to read for about three hours a day.
Reading American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld. He found this at the library on a display table of books that get checked out a lot.
A favorite -- for now, anyway -- The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Since The Road he's read Blood Meridian and other Cormac McCarthy books. The Road, he said, is different. For one thing, it's not as violent.
If he were to write his own book, it might be the history of North America, rewritten, as if the European settlers had all died at Jamestown and the Indians had remained in control of the continent. 
August 11, Tuesday evening -- Reading The Bible
At the 24th Street BART station
Sharing a passage in Romans. They read the Bible every day. Their church is just down the street at the corner of Mission and Precita.
What else do they like to read? I'm not sure if this was a problem in translation -- we were speaking Spanish and English -- but, when I asked their favorite books, they didn't give answers outside of the Bible, but within. Their favorite books are the Psalms and Songs of Solomon.
August 7, Friday afternoon -- Reading the newspaper
At San Francisco Soup Company in the Financial District, where I overheard, between patron and counter-person, that the soup and sandwich deal is the best bang for your buck
Reading a Kindle, one of four which he purchased for his family -- for himself, his wife, son and daughter. Because they were all purchased on his credit card, when one of them buys a book, they ALL get it, for the price of one. (The max number you can buy and get this deal is five.)
Over the past thirty-years he and his wife have moved four times between the East Bay and San Francisco. Before the last move, they got rid of a lot of books. Now, he has just one bookshelf and intends on keeping it that way. If given a choice between art and books, he'd rather cover his walls with art. Among the books on his Kindle, which will keep the art on his walls: A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Kahled Hosseini; a book about American Sign Language; and Toobin's book about the Supreme Court, which he said was too big to carry on the airplane, but, with a Kindle....
He is an author as well as a reader. Last September he published a book which he coauthored with the Dalai Lama called Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion. He has written several other books as well, including Telling Lies, was on my family's bookshelf while I was growing up.
His family is a writing family. His wife writes, too. They even write together -- his wife and daughter have coauthored a book.
August 4, Tuesday evening -- Reading Sirena Cheng
On Market Street -- she's just stepped to the side of where she was selling the scarves that her mother knit, which are beautiful, with crocheted roses embedded.
Reading a mystery novel about memory.
If she were to write her own book, it'd be a family drama, -- parents fighting, children watching.
July 25, Saturday afternoon -- Reading Dean Crawford
Amidst throngs of people at The Green Arcade during an Indie-bookstore walking tour organized by Annie Janusch, who works for the Center for Art in Translation, and Scott Esposito, who edits an online journal called The Quarterly Conversation.
Checking out the offerings and perusing Shark, by Dean Crawford. The Green Arcade specializes in -- I quote from their website -- "books on the environment, politics, sustainability, the slow food movement, organics, urban planning, nature [like sharks!], and children's books."
"There are always 40 people in my store," said our host when we all arrived. He may have been joking, but they do have a lot of great events there, one of which I'm excited about on September 2 -- Rebecca Solnit is reading.
The tour ended at Booksmith in the Haight (after a 17-block interval), with sangria and a reading of Pablo Neruda by one of the booksellers. I sat down and, with my back resting against a shelf of young adult novels, removed my shoes, massaged my feet and, like some others, closed my eyes, and listened.
July 24, Friday afternoon -- Reading Hugh Trevor-Roper
In the Financial District
Reading The Last Days of Hitler, by Hugh Trevor-Roper, specifically, a part about the corruption of Hitler's doctors. What about the doctors, I'm not sure. He stopped mid-sentence when someone walked by and tried to steal my lunch, which I'd abandoned on the neighboring table. (Half of a three-salad combo meal, which included these amazing lentils soaked in balsamic with baby spinach. thanks, by the way, if you see this.)
A book he recommends -- Rain of Gold, by Victor Villasenor, whose name he kept confusing with Sonia Sotomayor (same meter to the names). The book is a Mexican family saga that he began to describe with detail and enthusiasm, but again, he was cut short. I wish I could record his words right here, but, I can't. I needed stuff my half finished lunch in my bag and run back to work. 
July 21, Tuesday afternoon -- Reading George Orwell on her Kindle
While having lunch at the Crocker Galleria
Reading the last, undetected electronic version of 1984, by George Orwell.
Actually, no. Reading Poison Study, by Maria V. Snyder.
Favorite books within the last couple of years -- Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner and Geek Love, by Katherine Dunn. Another favorite from long ago -- Wuthering Heights, which she also has on her Kindle (along with the Twilight series, by Stephenie Meyer.)
If she were to write her own book, it'd be a medieval fantasy.
