SFist Reads
As regular readers of this column know, this is the little intro section where we talk about using the San Francisco Public Library's online reserve system, but our dear Friend of SFist Christine gave us an important message to pass on to all of you. Our regular book discussion can be found upon expansion, but for now please give all your attention to Christine, and follow her bidding:
Due to your numerous mentions of SF Library reserve system, there has been HUGE increase in usage. This is great, however it seems, per librarians that very few of these massive numbers of new users are actually picking up their books after reserving them. For example, books like Sean Wilsey's had over 250 reserves; Freakonomics had 300 reserves as of yesterday!! If most of those folks do not pick up their reserves, the rest of us will have to wait a week per person (how long the library holds each reserve for pick up) before our turn. Given the fact that library budgets are smaller, less books ordered -- these unnecessary waits add up to a very long time! Please encourage your readers to reserve, PICK UP (and be extra nice to library staff, whose workload has increased due to city cut backs) AND contribute when they are able to library funding/volunteer programs.
SFist Eve just finished Don't Eat This Book, the sort of companion volume to author Morgan Spurlock's documentary Super Size Me. She's not sure what compelled her to read it -- she basically knew most of the stuff in there already, but sometimes in this fast food-centric culture it's nice to be reminded of things like how most feedlots purchase exterminated animals from animal shelters to feed to their cattle, that a Chicken McNugget can be comprised of bits of over 100 different antibiotically treated chickens, and that a Americans eat over 1 million animals a day. Basically a Fast Food Nation for the MTV set, with few insights not already provided by the film, this book has instead provided Eve with witty factoids like those cited above. The sad thing is, Eve is lucky enough to be surrounded by folks who never attack her for her dietary choices, and in a place with many vegan, veggie, and non-fast food options. She might have to delay her rapier-like responses to the eternal non-Bay Area question "how do you eat that rabbit food?" to the next out-of-town wedding or bar mitzvah, and hopes she can retain all the information until then.
Because SFist Jon needs to concern himself with all things San Francisco, he was excited to finally get his grubby hands on a copy of James Dalessandro's 1906, his novel about the 1906 fire and turn-of-the-century San Francisco. He loved the historical detail and reading about such legendary-for-SF figures as Shanghai Kelly, Gen. Funston, Mr. Molinari, and a whole bunch of other people who have streets named after him. And while he thought Dalessandro might have laid the SF as a cesspool of humanity thing on a bit too much -- in the book, SF makes the town in "Deadwood" look like a nice suburban enclave where one can take the kiddies -- he loved reading about it. The main problem with the book, though, is that the writing was oftentimes of the variety of making us want to throw the book at walls in frustration -- clunky dialogue, bad narrative tactic, and a horrible habit of telling not showing. Even worse, he tried to write it to make it read like a contemporary for that time novel and it did not work. Not at all. Oh, and having read many similiary themed books and seen many similiary themed movies, all he can say is cliche, cliche, cliche. Bad guys on murder spree? Check. Hackneyed romance? Check. Plot twists seen a mile away? Check. But still, once we got over the hump, he loved it. What can he say, he loves disaster porn. As soon as the earth starts shaking, he can't wait to put the book down and wait to start Googling all the historical figures to see how true James was in his depictions.