Same Page SF | Technology, identity, and unrequited love
Plus, tonight is movie night - with a literary twist 🍿
Welcome back to Same Page SF, your home for all things local and literary!
I’m Christina, your friendly, well-informed, and unabashedly nerdy bookseller. Each week, I summarize and signal-boost author events, book clubs, and new releases happening across our city.
It’s another great week to be a reader in San Francisco. Here’s what you’ll want to attend if:
1) You’re in mood for one movie, two authors, and five books
Movie Night featuring Lauren Markham & Jenny Odell at the Roxie Theater. Monday April 14, 6pm, $11-30.
ZYZZYVA’s fantastic new film series invites acclaimed writers to share a favorite movie, along with a curated reading list that speaks to their selection. For their first event of the year, Lauren Markham and Jenny Odell - two of my favorite authors, nbd - have chosen the cult-hit documentary River and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time. They’ll discuss it following the screening, and then offer book-signing. (If you preorder the full reading list from Dog Eared Books, they’ll include a free tote!)
2) You’re thinking about tech and humanity
Vauhini Vara on Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age at Green Apple Books on the Park and via Zoom. Tuesday 4/15, 7pm, free.
Do you remember Ghosts, the moving and disturbing essay from 2021 in which novelist Vauhini Vara collaborated with AI - a wild concept at the time - to write about the death of her sister? Now she’s come out with Searches, a full-book exploration of how big tech has simultaneously fulfilled, exploited, and perverted the human need for connection; Carmen Maria Machado called it “heart-stoppingly sad, a formal high-wire act, a wise and funny and thoughtful encyclopedia of our modern age.” She’ll be discussing it with Dr. Alex Hanna of the Distributed AI Research Institute.
3) You’re looking for a “mesmerizing Möbius strip” of a story
Katie Kitamura on Audition at Green Apple Books on the Park and via Zoom. Wednesday 4/16, 7pm, free.
Join acclaimed author Katie Kitamura, in conversation with R. O. Kwon, to celebrate her new novel Audition. A taut and hypnotic tale told through two competing narratives, it centers on an accomplished actress and a young man who meet for lunch; who is he to her, and who is she to him? It’s received rave reviews from the likes of Lauren Groff (“eerie, a book so cold it feels hot”) and Hernan Diaz (“you have never read anything like this gorgeously disquieting book”).
4) You can’t resist an atmospheric love story
Seán Hewitt on Open, Heaven at City Lights and via Zoom. Thursday 4/17, 7pm, free.
Award-winning poet Seán Hewitt is visiting from Ireland to celebrate his gorgeously evocative novel Open, Heaven, a queer coming-of-age tale that “achieves rare peaks of lyricism and emotional intensity” (Kirkus). Set in a remote English village, it follows James, a quiet teenager whose sense of otherness has only deepened since coming out, as he meets and falls for the boy who will become his first (and enduring) love. Hewitt will be in conversation with Sam Sax, whose YR DEAD was longlisted for the National Book Award.
5) You’re desperate to understand what’s happening (and how not to be paralyzed by fear)
I mean. Aren’t we all? On Wednesday, the SFPL is hosting UC Law professors for a panel on Trump’s first 100 days (4/16, 6pm, free). On Thursday, join journalist Katherine Stewart for a discussion of her new book Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy with KALW’s Angie Coiro (4/17, 7pm, donation-based). On Saturday, visit Black Bird to hear from Gareth Higgins, author of How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying, along with store owner Kathryn Grantham (4/19, 7pm, registration required).
And if you want to keep reading and talking and resisting, maybe Adobe Books’ Anti-Imperialism Study Group or Bound Together Books’ Queering Anarchism is the place to do it.
Also
MONDAY Julian Zabalbeascoa on What We Tried to Bury Grows Here at Bookshop West Portal | Ursula Pike on An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir via City Lights Zoom | Pooja Bavishi on Malai: Frozen Desserts Inspired by South Asian Flavors at Omnivore | Meeting of Babes Who Book at Sour Cherry Comics
TUESDAY Intro to Bookbinding at San Francisco Center for the Book | Isaac Fellman on Notes from a Regicide, a story of trans self-discovery with a sci-fi twist, at Booksmith | Opening reception for Get Busy: LGBTQIA Zines from the Bay and Beyond at SFPL Main
WEDNESDAY Poet Alex Dimitrov on Ecstacy at Booksmith | Saumya Dave on psychological thriller The Guilt Pill at Book Passage | Ying Chang Compestine on her graphic novel-style recipe book Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, and Other Curiously Named Classic Chinese Dishes at Bookshop West Portal | Sarah Ahn on Umma: A Korean Mom's Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes at Omnivore | Vivian Blaxell on Worthy of the Event: An Essay at Adobe Books | Jason Rodriguez Vivrette and Ali Yağız Şen on the first complete English translation of Ahmed Arif's 1968 poetry collection, Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim (Longing for You Have I Worn Through Shackles), at Medicine for Nightmares | Launch party for Raise Your Other Right Hand: A Novel by Jody Weiner at City Lights
THURSDAY Speaking Axolotl, the Bay Area’s long running monthly Latine Reading series, featuring oral poet Lourdes Figueroa at Medicine for Nightmares | Jennifer Blowdryer on Music A-Z at Fabulosa | Bay Area poets Michael Koch and James Cagney at SFPL Main
FRIDAY Evolutionary biologist Nathan H. Lents on The Sexual Evolution: How 500 Million Years of Sex, Gender, and Mating Shape Modern Relationships at Book Passage | Superman Day at Mission: Comics and Art
SATURDAY Quiet Hour at Noe Valley Books | Storytime for Grownups at SFPL Western Addition | Cooking demo and book-signing with chef Katie Reicher on Season of Greens: A Collection of New Recipes from the Iconic San Francisco Restaurant at the Ferry Plaza Market | When Cherry Blossoms Fall, a performance with San Francisco Poet Laureate Ginny Lim and friends, at SFPL Main | Pathologies of Faith: The Intersection of Messianic Myth with Power, a day-long event exploring the ways in which the mythic roots of the old and new testaments influence contemporary politics, via City Lights Zoom
SUNDAY Scholar and teacher Richard Gabri on The Great Gatsby at Bird & Beckett | St. Rita's Amazing Traveling Bookstore and Textual Apothecary at San Francisco Center for the Book
Book-adjacent gatherings
Not *about* books, but around them
🏡 Dreaming of community living? Manny’s is holding a workshop on home-buying with friends. They’ll dig into the nuts and bolts of co-buying and share stories of folks who’ve managed to do it. Thursday 4/17, 6-7:30pm, $8.
🚲 SFPL Mission Bay is hosting The Bicycle Coalition for a class about bicycling in SF, complete with on-the-road Bay Wheels training (attendees will get free membership!). No bike necessary, but BYO helmet. Saturday 4/19, 11am-1pm, free (registration required).
🎵 Telegraph Hill Books is welcoming Sofar Sounds, a community that connects artists and audiences through live music in intimate spaces, for a surprise-lineup show. Saturday 4/19, 7:30pm, $34.
Let’s keep Same Page going, together.
Did you reach the end of this issue and think, wow, Same Page must be a lot of work!?
It is! Same Page is a labor of love, but it’s still a labor - one that requires time and focus. So I’m seeking 200 paid subscribers by July to make it sustainable.
Paid subscribers get weekly book recommendations, priority access to giveaways, and sneak peeks for events likely to sell out. (Founding subscribers also get personalized book suggestions on request!)
THANK YOU to those of you who have upgraded. I’m encouraged by your support and kind words.
I'm grateful to you for doing time-consuming but necessary work to help strengthen the fabric of the Bay Area's in-person literary community.
It would also mean a lot if you pass Same Page along to a bookish friend or two (or more, but let’s be real, we’re all introverts here).
As always, if you have a question to ask or an event to share, I’d love to hear from you! Reply to this email or find me at hello@samepagesf.com.
Cheers,
Christina
Book recommendations are my love language.
This week’s recommendation: a remarkable debut that shouldn’t be funny but is.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Same Page SF to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.