January 11, 2008 -- Friday evening

At a bar in the Haight,
Reading Smoke, by John Ed Bradley. The narrator is a first-time novelist and it's pretty funny.

Recently he read Angle of Repose (which won a Pulitzer), by Wallace Stegner. It's kind of epic, he said. It took place in California, and also Colorado, and just outside of San Jose and back East. Places he's been. He likes to read books that take place where he's been.

Three years ago he read a good book that is sister is reading right now--Life of Pi, by Yann Martel.

The last thing he read was a story by John Updike in the New Yorker called Outage. His wife read it, too, and said that she couldn't help herself from editing it while she read. He got about half way through--he found it sophomoric, felt content that his wife agreed.