Book Drives San Francisco

Three Books, Zero Pressure: Book Club Kickoff

This is the first meeting for this book club. I have chosen the following three books as they are popular, notorious classics across completely different genres, and most people would've read (or at least heard of) them! > **Please note:** You do **not** need to read all three books! Just having read (or being familiar with) **any one** of these books is more than enough to join the conversation. Here is our inaugural trio: * **[The Alchemist](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18144590-the-alchemist)** by Paulo Coelho * **[The Great Gatsby](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18401910-the-great-gatsby)** by F. Scott Fitzgerald * **[Neuromancer](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6088007-neuromancer)** by William Gibson

East Bay Women's Book Club August Meetup: Yesteryear

Hello, fellow female readers -- The book for the August Meetup is Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke For those of you who are new, I will send out the address to my house by Monday, August 17. Looking forward to gathering together and discussing the book. Bonnie

Solve a Murder! (Optional Book Club: The Tuesday Night Club by Agatha Christie)

The first of its kind in this meetup. I’ll bring a murder mystery to solve do bring your detective hats! There is also an optional book club. We will discuss the book from 5:30 to 6:00 pm, then solve a murder!

Book, Coffee, Chit Chat, etc. (Tuesday Edition)

ATTENTION: We are now meeting in person again! Please follow current recommendations around mask usage to keep everyone safe. Masks are always welcome and accepted, no matter the current regulations. If you'd like to meet online check out our meeting on the first Wednesday of every month. It's that time again! Let's chit chat about the books we exchanged last time and welcome newcomers bringing their first book. If you've been before you know the deal, otherwise just bring a book to share and expect to say both a few words about it and why you want to share it.

Captivating Book Club & Yummy Lunch

Calling all book lovers!

Calling all book lovers! Unplug and join us on the beach with a book you would like to read. Don't forget your book, beach chair/towel, mask, and a bottle of water. While we love to watch children run and play, it's an adults only kind of day. We will be on Alameda Beach (Shore Line Drive between Fair Haven Road and Sand Beach Road). Directions From Oakland: https://goo.gl/maps/77XFVvLqJa72 From San Francisco: https://goo.gl/maps/9fYAbGc7ozo From San Jose: https://goo.gl/maps/6wdEuX8K9xA2

The Emergent Mind by Gaurav Suri, Jay McClelland

Our book for August is *The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines* by Gaurav Suri, Jay McClelland For those who are interested, here is the [link](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w0ioSBKFd6fWBgv2yW8k1x9bfwLPFcD-9zgvSUth88Q/edit?gid=1204962740#gid=1204962740) to the detailed results from the voting. *The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines* (2025) is a work of popular science that examines how thought, perception, and decision-making take shape in both human brains and artificial intelligence systems. Its central concept is emergence—the idea that complex systems can arise from the interactions of many simple parts, none of which is individually intelligent. The authors build intuition for this idea using everyday examples, such as water molecules forming a liquid or ants collectively finding an efficient path, before extending it to neural networks: the framework, originally developed as a model of human cognition, that now underpins modern AI systems from chatbots to image generators. The book traces how the same principles that helped scientists understand perception, language, and choice in people came to drive advances in machine intelligence, and it argues that modeling the mind in this way does not reduce human beings to machines. It closes by considering the current limits of AI, which still depends on large amounts of data and lacks human-like goals, and the possibility of more autonomous systems emerging in the future. The book is co-authored by two cognitive scientists. Jay McClelland is a professor of psychology, computer science, and linguistics at Stanford University, where he directs the Center for Mind, Brain, Computation, and Technology; he was a key figure in reviving neural network modeling in the 1980s, and his work helped lay the groundwork for today's deep learning. Gaurav Suri is an associate professor of psychology at San Francisco State University, a computational neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who studies motivation and decision-making, and a co-author of the novel *A Certain Ambiguity*. The two met in 2014, and this is their first book together. *The Emergent Mind* was named a Best Book of the Year by *New Scientist* and selected by the Next Big Idea Club, and it is written for a general audience without requiring a technical background. This event will be hybrid. I will host the meeting in person at my house in Berkeley which is near the intersection of College Ave and Woolsey St. I will email people the address the Saturday before the meeting. Here are the Google Meet details: Google Meet link: [https://meet.google.com/zem-xnbw-tuh](https://meet.google.com/zem-xnbw-tuh) Or dial: ‪(US) +1 641-854-0146‬ PIN: ‪637 012 874‬#

Find Customers with Reference Solutions, SFPL's Secret Weapon

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Book 90: Babylon, South Dakota by Tom Lin

“ A Chinese couple living on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota begins to notice bizarre and mysterious happenings after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers builds a nuclear missile site nearby.” -New York Times This novel has come up on a few different lists of highly anticipated books this spring. Looking forward to discussing it with this group! -Jessica \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **How it works:** We’ll meet at a local brewery for some drinks and conversation. Finishing the book is not a requirement to attend—as long as you don't mind spoilers! We’ll have an unstructured, informal discussion of the book and the themes that the book brings up. We hope to see you there! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- From the author of the Carnegie Medal in Fiction winner The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu comes a tantalizing, American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a powerful, mysterious, and morally dubious military secret shapes their lives. "Lin's gossamer prose is patient and full of wonders."—Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams and An Oral History of Atlantis When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara. But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu’s farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America’s nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire. In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of "strangers in a strange land" to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another. TIME Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of the Year \| Town & Country's Best Books of Spring 2026

Sátántangó by László Krasznahorkai

Discuss Sátántangó by László Krasznahorkai

Read/Discuss: A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley with Larry Buttrose

August Book Club: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

We are mixing things up for August and meeting on a Wednesday as Tuesday is National Night Out. This also gives us a chance to visit La Loulou which is closed on Tuesdays. ABOUT THE BOOK #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly), cinematic thriller full of suspense, humor, and fascinating science—from the author of The Martian. HUGO AWARD FINALIST • NEW YORK TIMES READER PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.