Book Swaps San Francisco

December Book Swap!

October Book Club: The Only One Left

The arrival of October means it’s time for a spooky book! For the next meet up in October, we’ll be reading The Only One Left by Riley Sager. The Marin library system has plenty of copies available. Happy reading!

East Bay Women's Book Club November Meetup: Held

Hello, fellow female readers -- The book for the November meetup is "Held" by Anne Michaels. For those of you who are new, I will send out the address to my house by Monday, November 16. Looking forward to gathering together and discussing the book. Bonnie

Mixed Bag at Belmont Story Swap

Please know that an RSVP here on Meetup MEANS NOTHING. You need to go to www.StorySAC.org to get the details on how to join the Story Swap on Zoom. DO NOT RSVP HERE!! Our Zooming story swap welcomes ready listeners, eager tellers, & would-be tellers. Come try us out. Contact: email Linda Walls: lindaglennlee@yahoo.com

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.

November: Colm Tóibín - The News from Dublin

**Recommended Stories:** * The Journey to Galway * The News from Dublin * Five Bridges We're going Irish this November, with a collection from an author I've always wanted to read. Apologies for posting this a bit late. See you there! **For First-Timers:** We recommend reading at least one story, but feel free to read as little or as much as you'd like! Discussion is open, informal, and we try to focus on the recommended stories listed above. **About the Collection:** Nine stories of quiet, restrained realism — Tóibín's signature mode — mostly circling Ireland, exile, and the things families don't say.

November Meeting - Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne

Come meet us for discussion about Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne. Grab a coffee & a biscuit then meet us in the back garden for some scintillating literary discussion!

SF CogSci #34: Tapes Together Strong

Note: this session has been moved from November 17 to November 3 — same time, same place. Sorry for the shuffle. The vote for SF CogSci #34 is in. We’ll be reading [Tapes Together Strong: The Co-evolution of Computation and Cooperation](https://arxiv.org/html/2609.10817v1), by Jha, Cicala, Agüera y Arcas, Richards, Jaques, Kleiman-Weiner, and Niklasson (2026). You can read it here. See you Tuesday, November 3rd, 7–9pm at Frontier Tower. If you're attending in person, please be sure to register [here](https://luma.com/san-francisco-cognitive-science-reading--9b7e) as well, so you can get into the building.

Automatic Noodle @ Woods Lowside

Come enjoy a drink at Woods Lowside and discuss our November read! In November we meet a week earlier than usual, so we’re officially making November our Novella month. Our Novella for November is Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. Hope to see you there!

Discussion: Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman

Hey beloveds! We’re journeying across oceans in our November book, Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman, which traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade and considers what it means to be a “stranger” in one’s motherland. We’re so pleased to have our discussion hosted by The Sanctuary, an apothecary and wellness studio owned by Black queer women. This is sure to be an evocative read and we’re grateful to be able to process this book in community and in spaces that we’ve conjured and nurtured for our own healing and belonging. Please consider supporting our host by getting [a copy of the book from The Sanctuary using this link](https://thesanctuary.energy/products/african-american-herbalism-a-practical-guide-to-healing-plants-and-folk-traditions-copy-1) . Warmly, Jillian **Book description:** In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, she reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African American history. The slave, Hartman observes, is a stranger—torn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider. There are no known survivors of Hartman’s lineage, no relatives in Ghana whom she came hoping to find. She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way and with figures from the past whose lives were shattered and transformed by the slave trade. Written in prose that is fresh, insightful, and deeply affecting, Lose Your Mother is a “landmark text” (Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams). **Getting the Book:** Please consider purchasing the book from our host, The Sanctuary. You can have [a copy shipped to you or reserved for pick-up using this link](https://thesanctuary.energy/products/african-american-herbalism-a-practical-guide-to-healing-plants-and-folk-traditions-copy-1) . This book is also available at the Oakland Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library. Wanna suggest a book for our reading list? Fill out this [Book Recommendation Form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeylvP8o3M5ekE96RJTNSeSSmugeXzBFi4mY0Zc2BjAsasCTw/viewform).

Song of Solomon

Discuss Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon”

Book #2: Big Swiss-Jen Beagin

**Hi everyone!** **For October, the winning book is Big Swiss by Jen Beagin.** **Darkly funny, provocative, and wildly unconventional.** **A contemporary novel about a 45-year-old transcriptionist who falls into an explosive affair with one of a sex therapist’s clients.** **Themes to explore and discuss during our next meetup (if you feel comfortable)** **• Female pleasure** **• Trauma** **• Modern intimacy** **• Mental health** **• Infidelity** **See you all soon! 🎃**