Discover what's new this month at your local library!
|
|
|
|
 |
Longform Article Reading Club |
|
| |
|
|
Like a book club, but less commitment
| This month we have an interesting selection for AANHPI Heritage Month: a personal essay by Xujun Eberlein that weaves together poetry, Chinese mythology, a love for nature, and cross-cultural relationships. It's less journalism and more creative nonfiction.
Scroll to the bottom of the newsletter for the recap of our discussion about "A Good Death." |
|
| |
|
|
|
See you on Zoom on the 30th! -- Kelci |
 | |
May Selection
|
 |
by Xujun Eberlein
|
Saturday, 5/30/2026
10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Virtual Library (Zoom)
The man I’m now married to was a foreigner in 1987, when he and I took a heretical hike along the Yangtze. We went to the mountains of Wushan through which the renowned Three Gorges are carved. According to a Tang Dynasty poem, Water is hardly water after experiencing oceans / Clouds are no longer clouds apart from Wushan’s mountains. Until a dam—said to be the world’s largest—cut the Yangtze into two halves at the waist, those damned words were so poignant that they could make the stoic sentimental.
American Literary Review, March 2014
Access options:
|
| Register on Zoom
| June Selection
|  |
by Tara Duggan and Jason Fagone; Photos by Santiago Mejia |
Saturday, 6/27/2026 10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Virtual Library (Zoom)
Giuseppe Pennisi: Do you want to see something that I found on the bottom of the ocean with my camera? It’s a really big secret.
You have to promise. Not to show anyone. -- Tara Duggan, reporter: OK. You are making me nervous.
Can you guess what this is? -- Drugs?
It’s not drugs. What color is it? -- Yellow?
-- Treasure. This is something big so we should talk about it at the dock.
San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 3, 2019
Access options:
|
| Register on Zoom
|
| July Selection
|
 |
by Kate Zambreno |
Saturday, 7/25/2026
10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Virtual Library (Zoom)
Judging from how Kafka talks about traveling in his diaries, he’s a frail and neurotic man urged by the obsession to write—but in this patchwork essay of tidy squares and literary headings, Zambreno associates him with photography, Paris, Lake Maggiore, art theft and historical occurrences both literally connected to his life and figuratively relevant. Does Kafka get what Kafka complains about wanting? In reconstructing Kafka’s history through her own obsessive research and placing the writer’s process within the essay itself, Zambreno presents a portrait both splintered and replete of the famous Czeck author as a young man.
Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2019
Access options:
|
| Register on Zoom
| Recap From Last Meeting
| We read "A Good Death" by William Vollmann from Harper's |
A couple weeks ago a small group of us met at the North Beach branch library to ponder mortality, what it means to live a good life in order to have a good death, and how our desires for reincarnation come into the mix (so many of us just want to be reincarnated at American middle-class dogs--strange that Vollmann didn't interview a Hindu for the piece).
Some things we spent a good amount of time discussing in close reading... the different between euthanasia, dying with dignity, and assisted suicide as defined by the essay how the author used humor -- some of us saw it as sarcasm or irony who were the "authorities" that Vollmann interivewed and why/how did he pick these individuals? Some quotes we marinated on:
"The good death is to live well... the best way to die well is to die living" (the Padre) "If you don't owe anybody anything, then you'll die in your sleep" -- Adolfina, the Catholic woman in Mexico "In Sacramento, if you don't do drugs and you don't drink too much, you really have to work to get murdered" -- Ed Smith, the coroner "I think the goal is that you have high quality of life and then you die suddenly." -- Katrina Hedberg, State of Oregon epidemiologist "The focus of how exactly we depart this earth is less important than how we live our life." -- Elmer Heap, former Mormon bishop, current seminary teacher Extra Information about William Vollman, the author of the essay
Vollmann has just released a four-volume nonfiction work, A Table for Fortune. Individual volumes are now published while the box set will come out later this year. Publisher's website: A Table for Fortune: Box Set. I requested that SFPL purchase the work. Someone pointed out that Vollmann recently disclosed he has been battling colon cancer for years -- it's hard to know whether that diagnosis came before or after his statement in "A Good Death": "On the other hand, a massive stroke or heart attack does not sound like such a bad ending, especially if one of these rescues me from colon cancer." (Read the WSJ article where he discusses it.) Read a handful of other essays Vollmann wrote for Harper's through the SFPL database.
Recommended reading if you like this genre:
|
|
|
Thanks for reading!
|
Selections are curated by librarians in the Magazines and Newspapers Center. See all 2026 selections.
We welcome your suggestions! Guidelines:
Around 10,000 words in length Strong sense of plot driving the narrative Any topic or genre Preference given to articles from periodicals the library subscribes to Have questions or comments?
Contact us by phone at (415) 557-4453 or email at mnc@sfpl.org
|
| Sign-up for this Newsletter
|
|
|
Magazines and Newspapers Center Main Library, 5th Floor
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
sfpl.org/magsnews
|
|
|
