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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September 23, 2019, Monday morning -- Reading a guidebook

In the Mission District, waiting for a bus

He is reading Let's Go: Greece & Turkey. He found the book at the bus stop and was looking at the maps. He said he really only picked up the book because of the picture of the cows stuffed inside. He asked me if I wanted the book. I said no, although I am interested in Greece and Turkey, especially since I just ate amazing Musaka and a stuffed pepper at the Greek Festival yesterday. I now feel a little guilty about not saying yes to the book because when I said no, he tossed the book in the trash on his way to get on the bus. I admit that one of the reasons I didn't want the book was because it looked too dirty to put in my bag. He probably thought the same thing.

September 14, 2019, Saturday afternoon -- Reading Deborah Eisenberg

In the Mission District, on a warm and sunny day

He is reading a collection of short stories called Your Duck is My Duck, by Deborah Eisenberg. He was drawn to it by the sticker that says it's a Notable Book of the Year. Before this he read Normal People, by Sally Rooney, set in Dublin, and also another book of short stories called The Houseguest: And Other Stories, by Amparo Dávila.

August 31, 2019, Saturday afternoon -- Reading Greek women poets

At a laundromat in the Mission District

He is reading Greek Women Poets, published by Thelphini Press. He said he loves reading for the flow of the words. He was just at Community Thrift, down the street, where he buys books sometimes. He also buys books from catalogs. The other books he just bought are Everyman and Other Miracle and Morality Plays, published by Dover Thrift Editions; Burning The Maid: Poems for Joan of Arc, by Marcy Heidish; and Tree in the Trail, by Holling Clancy Hollins, which he bought for the pictures (he's an artist) and because he had Tree in the Trail and other Holling Clancy Hollins books when he was a kid.

August 25, 2019, Sunday night -- Reading Jeff Guinn

At the laundromat

She is reading The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple, by Jeff Guinn. She heard about it from a podcast called Last Podcast on the Left. It's been on her reading list for a while and she finally got around to it. Recently she's also read The Secret History by Donna Tartt and My Sister, the Serial Killer, a black comedy thriller that was long-listed for the Booker Prize, by Oyinkan Braithwaite, a Nigerian author. (I just put a hold on it at the library.) Her two favorite books are The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Suskind, translated by John Woods.

I had waited to the last minute to photograph a reader this week and on Sunday night, on my 45-minute walk home from dinner at a friend's house I peeked into every taqueria, fast food restaurant laundromat, bar, and donut shop hoping to see someone with a book. I was almost home and about to forgo posting this week when I saw this reader in the back corner of a laundromat. Thanks again for letting me take your picture!

August 11, 2019, Monday afternoon -- Reading Stuart Gibbs

In Taichung, Taiwan, before a presentation at the World Congress on Extensive Reading

He is reading Spy School, by Stuart Gibbs. He usually reads detective or mystery stories, and spy novels. His two favorite authors are Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.

August 11, 2019, Sunday afternoon -- Reading Colin Cotterill

In Taichung, Taiwan, taking a reading break between presentations at the World Congress on Extensive Reading, a conference on how language learners can improve their language skills by extensively reading books at or below their level.

She is reading Slash and Burn, by Colin Cotterill. Her favorite book is usually the one she just finished reading. In this case, A Woman of No Importance, by Sonia Purnell, which she described as a well-researched page turner. A Woman of No Importance is about an American spy and guerrilla leader named Virginia Hall who worked with the French Resistance and fought against Nazi Germany during World War II. She was at the top of the most-wanted list and is now finally being recognized.

There were presentations from 9:30 am until 6:20 pm and if you go to all of them, you get information overload. Attendees have to balance their FOMO so they don't burn out. Maybe today I will take time out to read, too.

August 3, 2019, Saturday afternoon -- Reading Sukenari Hino

In Taipei, where I'm visiting, somewhere between my hotel in the Ximending District and the yoga studio (that does bilingual Mandarin / English classes!) in the Daan District

He is reading Grammaticalization of Japanese Pseudonouns and Auxilary Verbs: A Morphosyntactic and Semantic, by Sukenari Hino. He teaches Japanese to Taiwanese Buddhist monks.

July 11, 2019, Thursday evening -- Reading Kristen Arnett

Working at Adobe bookstore

She is reading Mostly Dead Things, a novel by Kristen Arnett, who is "Twitter famous."

One of her favorite authors is Octavia Butler. She just finished reading Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. On her list to read is Milkman, by Anna Burns, which won the Mann Booker Prize for Fiction in 2018, and Lost Children Archive, a novel by Valeria Luiselli, which was inspired by the issues at the Mexican border.

She is reading

July 10, 2019, Wednesday morning -- Reading Isabella Hammad

In the Financial District

She is reading The Parisian, by Isabella Hammad. She's reading it because she wants to become more knowledgable about what she missed out on in high school because she wasn't able to focus. The book is about the Middle East.

One of her favorite books is She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy, a memoir by Jill Soloway.

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.

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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.