Ever since the SFist Reads column turned us back onto the awesomeness of checking books out of the SF Public Library, we've been big fans of the First Stop area of the Main Library, where the library put all their books they'd acquired in the last two years. We've spent many a pleasant few hours checking out the latest memoirs, or all the books in the 300 section, or randomly pulling out titles in the......

We had a good time going through the recipes and eating stories in Street Food, the new book by wunderkind Tom Kine - that is, when we got over the insane jealousy. He got a book contract to travel for three months and eat all he could! How do we get something like that? We're excited to try his takes on bolani (Afghan flat bread) and Kadu (roast pumpkin paste), which he got from......

--A guy jumped onto the field to say hi to Barry Bonds yesterday. Arrested, drunk. [The Chron photo pool, the Snitch.] --They're looking on the Oregon coast now for the missing Alameda County woman and her friend the priest. It's been three weeks. [The Chron.] --Alamo Square was cordoned off this afternoon after gunfire on McAllister Street hit a motorist in the head. [ABC 7.] --There were also shootings at Webster and Rose and Div......

While San Francisco is known globally for a certain worldview, those of us who actually live here know that when it comes down to particulars, we don't often agree. We can't agree on Blue Angels. We can't agree on a Muni solution. Heck, we can't even agree on what to do about Ed Jew (oh no!). But you know a banner we can all unite under? The One City One Book: San Francisco Reads program. Imagine, hordes of people reading a sort of narrative story on paper! No electricity required (save, perhaps, for reading lights). ...

Author/artist/director/performer/etc Miranda July came by Modern Times Bookstore in The Mission last night to read from her new collection of short stories, and the arty-coiffed standing-room-only crowd of fans spilled out the door onto the sidewalk....

We told you, Colts vs. Bears in the Super Bowl. Man, we knew we should have gone to Vegas. Anyways, we're happy with the game, not necessarily because it'll be a good game, but because it's two of the original NFL teams with great traditions and great, traditional uniforms. How could you not love a game that harkens back to the 50's and 60's? ...

Tartine Bakery is the perfect illustration of the Yogi Berra aphorism: nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded. We live walking distance from the 18th and guerrero shop, yet we shun the place many a week-end morning, not feeling up to standing in that long line, no matter how good the frangipane croissant or the banana cream pie. (Also, we slightly resent them for creating a smaller portion of the yummy bread pudding topped with seasonal fruits, instead of the earlier one-size-fits-all. We know have pang of guilts ordering the large one, the only one we ever want, but now made unreasonable by the smaller one). ...

We would like any polar bear who plays the accordion, or bunny who glows in the dark. But what won us over for the Octonauts & the Only Lonely Monster, a children's book released earlier this month by San Francisco publisher Immedium, is that, out of the eight animals who compose the Octonaut team, there are both a sea-ottery scientist and an octopussy professor. That’s at least 25% of the crew with a doctorate degree.......

Looking at the Green Apple site the other day, we were struck by their Staff Picks section, which describes said staff as "helpful and friendly book and music lovers without the indie attitude." Any reader of Box Office Poison (thanks for the recommendation, SFist Jeremy! We love it!) can tell you that working in a bookstore is oftentimes a thankless task. Props to those Green Apple kids, who do their jobs with a casual grace,......

Hey, did anyone go to the poets Eleven event at the new Mission Bay branch of the San Francisco Public Library? We love that we have a reason to hit the library besides picking up (or returning) our online reserves. SFist Jer decided to try out Runner's World magazine, thinking it would motivate him to run. While it was somewhat interesting to read a specialty exercise magazine, he's still more or less been stuck......

We're having one of those weeks where we're completely unsatisfied with every book we pick up, even those from authors we ordinarily like. The new Fay Weldon just made us glad that we're a) childless and b) not British, and the Jonathan Ames we just picked up from the SFPL is leaving us cold. He just seems so anxious about everything, and he always has an erection. In recent (that is, the last two or......

While the San Francisco Public Library site is up, their search is not! Far be it from us to criticize anyone for the occasional technical bobble. Get well soon, SFPL search! SFist Rita just finished Fantasyland by Sam Walker, a book about how the author (a sportswriter for the Wall Street Journal) did in the most competitive fantasy baseball league in the country, in 2004. It's pretty hilarious even (or especially) if you don't know......

We've taken to leaving the house -- sometimes for hours at a time -- without a jacket, which can only mean one thing: it's Summer Book Club time. Dude, look at the stipulations: "Small incentive prizes will be awarded to enrolled children who have read for two, four and six hours during the eight weeks of Summer Reading." When we were a kid, we read six hours a day (our "honey, don't you want to......

While the SFPL's great One City One Book program doesn't begin until this fall, they've already announced their next choice, The Hummingbird's Daughter. According to Rosie Levy Merlin, One City One Book's Program Manager, "We'll have over 500 copies of the book available at SFPL soon, and people can already reserve one of the 500 titles so they'll have a nice brand-new book to borrow and read when they arrive!" Thanks for the heads up,......

We were stumbling around the internets yesterday and discovered that our very own Ms. Pelosi has set up a YouTube page. How with it, our Ms. Pelosi. And what will you find there? Oh, just clips of her playing soccer, lip-synching to pop hits, and ranting into a web cam whenever Tim Russert refuses to take her phone call. And boy, is her "Lazy Sunday" parody, "Lazy Appropriations", hilarious ("Lazy Appropriations start debate in the late afternoon/call Steny Hoyer just to see how he's doing/Hello? What up Stens?/Yo Pelosi what's cracking?/You thinking what I'm thinking? (Earmarks!)/Then it's happening"!). No, actually, you'll find clips of her and her peeps giving speeches on the House floor. Sadly, none of them appear to be mash ups with clips from anime cartoons. ...

Hungry Planet, the latest book by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, visits 30 families in 24 countries to take a look at what they eat. The book's subtitle is What the World Eats but the authors are a couple from Napa, the publisher from Berkeley: this is a local effort, and we can chauvinistically be proud of the James Beard Foundation award it just received. Each family in the book is photographed with all the......

Have you checked out the eBooks and eAudio at the SFPL? We're itching to try out the audio options, but they don't have anything that works on Macs or iPods. Boo! After a weekend double feature of In Cold Blood and Capote, both never seen before by SFist Rain, she got the urge to actually, finally, read the book that was (in a sense) responsible for both films: Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It......

Every spring we have a major purge and get rid of a lot of the books we've accumulated over the past year. We sell what we can at a local used bookstore, before donating the rest to the Friends of the SFPL. Any recommendations on where we can get the biggest bang for our book sale? Let us know in the comments! SFist Eve just finished The Brief History of the Dead. Half set in......

In a shameless bit of self-reference, we will announce that it's our birthday, and we have therefore been the happy recipient of more than one Amazon gift certificate over the course of the day. We're not the kind of a**hole who complains about a gift (shut up, we're not!), but we did have a moment of crisis: how do we reconcile our sincere and public support of our fine local independent bookstores with the......

While the name of this column is "SFist Reads", we have to ask: has anyone used the SFPL's online reserve system to reserve DVDs? We're just not as Netflixy as we used to be, and we're starting to wonder if the library might be a good substitute. Let us know your experiences in the comments! SFist Eve just finished Max Barry's novel Company, a brilliantly angry distillation of the workplace follies mocked by Dilbert......

We don't know if we have a library guardian angel or if our late return repeat offender status has put us in a special class, but we've started getting "courtesy notes" in our inbox when the due dates approach on our checked-out items. Of course, when we get an email from the SFPL we get all excited and assume our online reserves are in, but a reminder to get our stuff in on time......

Geez, the SF Public Library's site is sloooow today. We might not have the patience to make any online reserves, and might have to head straight to one of our fine local independent bookstores. Yes, folks, it's that kind of day. SFist Cheshire is trying to get into Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude, but so far it's a little impenetrable. Too much writerly acrobatics for Chesh's taste in the first 40 pages or so.......

Glowing piece in Inc. aside, we hear that Kepler's may be in trouble again. Folks, when you can, please support your local bookstores. Sure, we all gotta Amazon sometimes, but don't forget to send some money the way of the bookstores in our community, or all we'll be left with is a bunch of Borders and Barnes and Nobles. SFist Jackson is anxiously awaiting the delivery to his local library branch of his reserved copies......

Remember when we told you about the Northern California Book Awards? SFist reader Mark went, and blogged it. From his post you can see that it wasn't the event it could have been -- and, in fact, he emailed us a day later with http://liz-henry.blogspot.com/2006/04/lambda-lit-night.html">this link to Liz Henry's experiences at Lambda Lit night. In his words, "The contrast between the two events is, I think, instructive", and we're inclined to agree. As Mark......

Leave work early today for the Northern California Book Awards! It's all happening at the Main Library (100 Larkin Street), starting with a 5 p.m. book signing and reception with many of the nominated authors in the Latino/Hispanic Room. The awards ceremony starts at 6 in the Koret Auditorium. Admission for the event is free. SFist Rita just finished Money: A Memoir, by local author Liz Perle, about her (and by extension, all women's)......

We just discovered the Branch Library Improvement Program Bookmobile and we are IN LOVE. We're switching all our online reserves to the bookmobile, we're that excited. Seriously, some of our happiest childhood memories involve the bookmobile! (Mom, save your email. We have many excellent childhood memories, some of which involve the bookmobile, others of which involve the many other wonderful things you have done for us. Envy not the bookmobile!) But our crush on......

We've never had much occasion to use MapMuse, an interest-based interactive mapping service. That is, until we saw that now they're mapping independent bookstores and book clubs. We think that this is pretty damned neat. Between that and the SFPL's online reserve system, we might not ever have to brave Barnes and Noble again! SFist Jackson is reading a rare (for him) contemporary work, Michel Houellebecq's first novel, Whatever. First off, the translation, by......

We finally paid off all our late fees accrued during an unfortunate incident invloving a badly overdue book under the passenger seat of our Civic. Now we're free to make online reserves again! Of course, our independent bookstore purchases have been picking up the slack -- but we're far more likely to reserve books we're not so sure about (like, say Everyone Worth Knowing) than to buy them. We're just frugal like that. SFist Jer......

Oh, how we love the San Francisco Public Library. The online reserve system, the many convenient branches, and how cool is the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection (thanks for the tip, Dad!)? You can look at their collection online, or view it in person at the Main Library's San Francisco History Center. We love our library! Know what SFist Eve doesn't love? Maureen Dowd's Are Men Necessary. SFist Rita lent Eve her copy, gleefully exclaiming......

We're reading books both old and new, books accessed via the SFPL's online reserve system and our local independent bookstores. Thisd is why we love doing this column -- we love seeing the diversity of our friends book choices. What are you reading? Share with the class in the comments. His thirst for the blood of aristocrats slaked (for now), SFist Jackson's attentions have turned from Revolutionary France to the British Empire, with the......