People Reading : January 1, Saturday afternoon -- Reading Open Exchange

Thanks for visiting

I had been posting on Mondays 10am Pacific Time, but with Covid-19, I have slowed things down. For a while I was on lockdown in San Francisco and interviewed a few people from six + feet away. Now, I am in Taiwan, where I am learning how to say, "Can I take your picture for my reading blog?" I hope to continue posting pictures. Check back from time to time for new content.

As a result of the Black Lives Matter movement, I am more aware that this blog is filled with few black and brown people reading. I am (or was) a privileged white person living in San Francisco. According to Wikipedia, San Francisco's makeup is: Whites 48.1%, Asians 33.3%, African Americans 6.1%, Native Americans 0.5%, Pacific Islanders 0.4%, other races 6.6%, two or more races 4.7%, Hispanics or Latinos of any race 15.1%. When I return to San Francisco, I hope to interview more people that look different than me.

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.

On a rainy New Year's Day, under the awning of Southern Exposure, an arts organization in the Mission District
I met two guys, drinking a bottle of Gallo and reading Open Exchange, a magazine that lists classes and other resources for healthy living in the Bay Area. "I usually like The Examiner or The Chronicle, but he gave it to me," said the guy holding the magazine. He told me how his brother-in-law used to work for the Chronicle downtown and let him stop by and get free newspapers and then give him money to get some food and coffee. He said he'd also sold a newspaper called The San Francisco News at 4th and Townsend Street and made more money in tips than he made from newspaper sales themselves.

He doesn't read books these days, though, when he was young, he remembers the best book he ever read was called Somebody Up there Likes Me: My Life So Far, by Rocky Graziano and Rowland Barber. It's about Rocky's tough childhood and, of course, boxing.

We talked about Gavin Newsom's Care Not Cash program, which they were not happy with. "We're happy with this shelter here," they said pointing to the awning that was shielding us from the rain, and explained that they don't need shelter, they need cash. They are both glad to see Newsom transition to Lieutenant Governor on January 3 and are hoping for a mayor that will give the homeless money and take better care of them. The interim mayor will be identified by the Board of Supervisors within the next few days.

The Open Exchange magazine gifter gifted me, too. He gave me From the Ground Up: Shafer Vineyards' First 25 Years, pictured below and, later, when I passed by again on my way back from grocery shopping, he gave me a book by Beth Gutcheon called Good-bye and Amen, which, on the cover shows a few houses on a bit of rocky land jutting over an ocean. "I don't understand this," he said, "the cover looks like it's from outer space and that doesn't make sense with the title. I don't want it."
They asked me repeatedly if I was having a good year. I said yes, but, of course, without the benefit of the Gallo, I was not as jolly as them. I think they were worried about me. "Happy New Year, Feliz Año Nuevo," they called out to me as I left. I lugged my groceries the remainder of my way home. I'd purchased a good bottle of wine on sale for just five bucks at the grocery store, and intend on doing more toasting to the New Year, too....after I post my blog.