August 19, 2018, Sunday evening -- Reading N.H. Munro, or "Saki"

On the bus, rolling through Potrero Hill

I usually don't photograph people on the bus because if the reader isn't interested, I can't just walk away. But, this time the bus was so empty, I could have. But he said yes.

He is reading Beasts and Super Beasts, by N.H. Munro, or "Saki." He bought it on 3rd Street and has  read it pretty much in one sitting. It includes the famous story, The Open Window, set in Victorian England, about a man going into the countryside to recuperate from a case of the nerves.

The book he read before this one was Of Mice and Men. He found it misogynistic. The 200 page book, he thought, wasn’t long enough for Steinbeck to develop the female characters. However, he said, this was not the case in The Grapes of Wrath.

Usually he reads books about radical economics and anarchy.

August 13, 2018, Monday evening -- Reading Madeline Miller

At a coffee shop in the Mission District

He is reading The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller. He picked it up because he has been fascinated by Greek mythology since childhood, and the book had a lot of good reviews on Goodreads.

Some of his favorites are Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens; The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien; and The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton, about a girl who is born with wings, which he said was an unusual book.

August 10, 2018, Friday afternoon -- Reading Evelyn Waugh

In the Mission District

He is reading, or actually revisiting, Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh. He read it about 6 or 7 years ago and recently saw it in a bookstore and wanted to read it again. It begins in Oxford in the 1920s between the wars and follows the life of a man named Charles Ryder who is friends with a family who lives in Brideshead Castle, in North Yorkshire. The complete title of the novel is Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.  

July 22, 2018, Sunday afternoon -- Reading David Sedaris

In the Mission District

Even though I was in a hurry I stopped to interview this reader, mostly because her book was making her laugh out loud. She is reading Calypso, by David Sedaris. Mostly she reads science fiction. Right now she's also reading The Three-Body Problem, by the Chinese author Liu Cixin (translated into English by Ken Liu), which she is excited about.  It won the Hugo Award, science fiction's most prestigious award, in 2015. She also likes Heinlein.