Discover what's new this month at your local library!
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Longform Article Reading Club |
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Like a book club, but less commitment
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This month we kick off Summer Stride with a selection from our own San Francisco Chronicle. "The Fisherman's Secret," a 17,800 word article about a Chico/Monterey-based man's search for treasure, is both a suspenseful hunt for gold as well as a portrait of a local family struggling to make ends meet. What do you think about the way gold or treasure changes people?
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Twenty hours of Summer Stride learning, reading, and library program participating secures you a free Summer Stride tote bag. Be sure to log your article reading time as well as discussion time on Beanstack in order to get your tote!
Scroll to the bottom of the newsletter for the recap of our discussion about "Clouds and Rain Over Three Gorges." | See you on Zoom on the 27th! -- Kelci |
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June Selection |  |
by Tara Duggan and Jason Fagone; Photos by Santiago Mejia |
| Register on Zoom
| 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
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| July Selection
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by Kate Zambreno |
| Register on Zoom
| 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
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August Selection |  |
by David Foster Wallace
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| Register on Zoom
| Saturday, 8/29/2026
10:00 - 11:30 a.m. Virtual Library (Zoom)
Harper’s Magazine, January 1996
One week on a cruise ship, otherwise known as a “supposedly fun thing I'll never do again,” and twenty thousand words later, we get to know how DFW really feels about this luxury experience that he absolutely does not enjoy. This piece of travel writing is a classic example of the extended literary journalism genre, and we're closing out our literary summer by puzzling over its intriguing prose and meandering footnotes.
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Recap From Last Meeting
| We read "Clouds and Rain Over Three Gorges" by Xujun Eberlein in May
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The beauty of community begins to take shape! Although we were a small group, all attendees last month were returners and we never ran out of things to talk about.
The author of "Clouds and Rain Over Three Gorges" had an essay in Best American Essays 2023 called "Ms. Daylily," originally published in the Iowa Review. While I considered that essay to be a strong candidate for the Longform Article Club's activities, ultimately it reminded me too much of "Jenisha from Kentucky," our February selection. Thankfully I discovered Xujun Eberlein had another "honorable mention," this time in Best American Essays 2015: "Clouds and Rain"! She has a retelling of the same story on her blog, which predates the publication of the essay, but includes a very cute picture of Bob on his bicycle: "The American Bicyclist at Large and His Adventure in China."
One fun thing we did was talk about our own travel experiences from China during the free discussion portion that followed the employment of the "shared inquiry method." The other fun thing we did was disect the Chinese euphemism for having sex that "clouds and rain" refers to (all thanks to the author's careful explanation of the poetry and myths that give many things meaning in Chinese). Ironically for the narrator and Bob, every interrogator was obsessed with it, while they were innocently enthralled with the landscape on the eve of its cutting off due to the dam.
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Thanks for reading!
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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
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Magazines and Newspapers Center Main Library, 5th Floor
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102
sfpl.org/magsnews
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