Book Drives San Francisco

August meeting - Universality by Natasha Brown

In August, we'll be discussing *Universality* by Natasha Brown, which was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. "Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar. A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral longread exposé raises more questions than it answers. Through a voyeuristic lens, Universality focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean. The follow-up novel to Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a compellingly nasty celebration of the spectacular force of language. It dares you to look away." https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/an-extract-from-universality-by-natasha-brown

Book 91: Endling by Maria Reva

I heard a review of this book on Fresh Air https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/nx-s1-5440259/endling-review-maria-reva-ukraine *Starting out as a straightforward story about a Ukrainian biologist, this witty, shape-shifting book turns into something trickier and more interesting.* This sounds like the kind of book I love -- Martha \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **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! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- Set in Ukraine, an eccentric scientist breeding rare snails crosses paths with sisters posing as members of the marriage industry to find their activist mother. As Russia invades, they embark on a wild journey with kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-its-kind snail. This darkly comic novel explores survival, love, and hope in times of encroaching darkness. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORKER, NPR, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, THE GUARDIAN, LIBRARY JOURNAL “Startling and ambitious.”—New York Times • “Virtuosic.”—NPR, Fresh Air • “Brilliant and heart-stopping.”—Los Angeles Times Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a loner and a maverick scientist who lives out of her mobile lab.She scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails, while her relatives urge her to settle down and finally start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men—not for love, but to fund her work—entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism and modernity. Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. Together they embark across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt when Russia invades. In a stunningly ambitious and achingly raw metafictional spiral, Endling brilliantly balances horror and comedy, drawing on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, Reva probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? To carry on with the routines of life under military occupation? And for those of us watching from over-seas: Can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored, or have they always been a fragile illusion? Endling is a tour de force from an author who weaves a story of love, loss, humor, and devastation that only she can tell.

Tough Guy Book Club - San Francisco CA

Join us for the San Francisco Chapter of Tough Guy Book Club. You can find out this month's book here [https://toughguybookclub.com/books](https://toughguybookclub.com/books?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExcTVleWRsd0ZYSWdqZXV4QXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR5aL8E3xpn05czDIaY5kEiHH3oABs4hICFLOrNXUsW-0gY5HePBTW1ni0SYzw_aem_qNxAzG9ij-sVr5-Rf8Uw3Q) If you have the chance, try to pick up the book and read a couple of pages before the night. If you haven’t, come anyway, no one gives a damn. We are not your boss. If you got one, make sure to bring your copy of the books down, it’ll help you talk about bits of it, we suggest underlining stuff that sticks out to you as important. Also like all months, we will be announcing next month’s book at the meeting and handing them out to those of you who were wise enough to pre-order last month. See you there. Want to know more about Tough Guy Book Club? Read this - [http://toughguybookclub.com/about-us](http://toughguybookclub.com/about-us?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAYnJpZBExcTVleWRsd0ZYSWdqZXV4QXNydGMGYXBwX2lkEDIyMjAzOTE3ODgyMDA4OTIAAR5QrDxxQmsaiuIfgbomTP4b6948UogKCm9U4Dudq5-VU_8aUx5RnTiUjO_R1Q_aem_n5AIic3b6NMTZ5TUJGTLkw)

Book, Coffee, Chit Chat, etc. (Wednesday 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.

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

Rambler Readers August Meeting

**NOTE: We are trying something new for our San Jose locations to avoid traffic. This meeting will be on a SUNDAY afternoon.** Location: Sneha's house in San Jose. Attendees will receive an email with the address several days prior to the meeting. Potluck, Sneha will provide a main dish, we provide everything else. This month's book selection: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman About the book: You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what. Future Books: Sept: SRK Oct: MB Nov: MR Dec: MT

The Poet Empress @ Caffe Greco

Come enjoy a snack at Caffe Greco and discuss our August read! Our book for August is The Poet Empress by Shen Tao. Hope to see you there!

August 2026 Bookclub Discussion: At the Edge of the Haight — Katherine Seligman

# 📚 Our August Book Has Been Chosen! Thanks to everyone who voted! Our next **Books & Brew** read is: ## 🌉 *At the Edge of the Haight* — Katherine Seligman Grab a copy, start reading, and join us for a great conversation! ### About the Book Twenty-year-old Maddy Donaldo has built a life for herself on the streets of San Francisco, finding family, routine, and survival in the hidden corners of Golden Gate Park. But when she witnesses the murder of a young homeless boy—and the killer sees her—her world is turned upside down. As police, grieving parents, and her own estranged family search for answers, Maddy must decide whether to continue hiding from the world or risk letting herself be found. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing San Francisco, *At the Edge of the Haight* explores homelessness, belonging, community, and the difficult choices that shape our lives. ────────── 📸 Follow us on Instagram **@booksandbrew_oakland** for meetup photos, book announcements, and future events.

Whose Cloud Is It Anyway? Take ownership of your data and your costs with BYOC

\*Please sign up on Luma: [https://luma.com/ruft92qf](https://luma.com/ruft92qf) ​SaaS is convenient right up until you need your data out, your vendor raises prices, or you need to connect internal systems. Bring Your Own Cloud splits the difference: the vendor runs the control plane, you keep the data plane in your own account. We'll go deep on design: how the control plane reaches into your VPC, where the shared responsibility line actually falls, leveraging open source databases, and cost reduction tricks that don't kill performance. Our speakers have built BYOC systems at every layer of the stack and will show the plumbing and failure modes. Come with hard questions. Bring your own cloud. ​ ​Food and drinks included 🍻 ​ ​*PS. Want to hear more great speakers? Sign up for the **Open Source Analytics and AI Conference** on Nov 2 (online and in-person).* [Register here](https://luma.com/eis7567t?utm_source=meetupeventdescription). *** # ​**​Agenda** * ​**6 pm** - Networking * ​**6:15 - 8:00 pm** \- Talks * ​**8:00 - 9:00 pm** - Networking

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

For August, we're plunging into our first historical horror novel, *Angel Down* by Daniel Kraus. Set amid the chaos of World War I, the story follows five soldiers who stumble upon something impossible: a fallen angel on the battlefield. As a bonus challenge, *Angel Down* is written as one continuous, unbroken sentence, mirroring the relentless march through the trenches. Join us in battle as we read the winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. *people on the waitlist are still welcomed to join!

Let’s read “Palace of the Drowned" by Christine Mangan