Book Swaps San Francisco

Books Not Bans presents Queer Book Cocktail and Reading Hour

Plant Swap - Luludi Living Art - FREE Community Event

**Join us for Luludi Living Art’s Spring Plant Swap, a free community event for plant lovers of all kinds.** Bring 1–3 healthy plants, rooted cuttings, plant babies, or small pots to exchange and take home the same number. It’s a fun and easy way to refresh your collection, share with others, and connect with fellow plant enthusiasts in the community. Whether you’re a seasoned plant parent or just starting your collection, all are welcome. Please bring only healthy plants and label them if possible so everyone can swap with confidence. Come spend a cozy spring afternoon surrounded by plants, creativity, and community at the Luludi Living Art Studio. **Event Details** Sunday, June 7th 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM Luludi Living Art Studio 346 N Ellsworth Ave San Mateo, CA **What to Bring** * Houseplants * Rooted cuttings * Plant babies * Small pots **Admission** Free event – all are welcome

Books Not Bans presents Queer Book Cocktail and Reading Hour

# Cocktails, reading and book swap! **Be amongst your fellow book people! All welcome. Bring a book for the book swap.**

East Bay Women's Book Club June Meetup: The Lion Women of Tehran

Hello, fellow female readers -- The book for the June Meetup is The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali For those of you who are new, I will send out the address to my house by Monday, June 15. Looking forward to gathering together and discussing the book. Bonnie

Pride Month Book Club: Atmosphere

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.

June Meeting: Zadie Smith - Grand Union

**Recommended Stories:** * The Lazy River * Two Men Arrive in a Village * Kelso Deconstructed Excited to dive into this collection, which was a narrow second to Octavia Butler in the last poll. See you soon! **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 Author:** Zadie Smith (born 1975) is a critically acclaimed British novelist, essayist, and professor. Born in North London to an English father and a Jamaican mother, Smith has become a leading voice in contemporary literature, celebrated for her sharp cultural commentary and exploration of identity.

June Book Club: Romantic Comedy

Let’s kick off summer with a fun romance! For the next meet up in June, we’ll be reading Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. The Marin library system has plenty of copies available. Happy reading!

The Odyssey Books 1-8

Discuss Books 1-8 of Homer’s Odyssey

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 88: Brother Bronte by Fernando Flores

I saw this on a New York Times list of recommended books and thought it looked interesting. According to their review, “Fernando A. Flores’s new novel imagines a bleak world where books are illegal and deprivation is the norm. It’s a blast.” Excited to dive into this one with you all! -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! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- Two women fight to save their dystopian border town―and literature―in this gonzo near-future adventure. The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of its mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick’s pockets. Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Proserpina and Neftalí. One of Three Rivers’ last literate citizens, Neftalí hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas, whose last novel, Brother Brontë, is finally in Neftalí’s possession. But after a series of increasingly violent atrocities committed by Crick’s forces, Neftalí and Proserpina, with the help of a wounded Bengal tigress, three scheming triplets, and an underground network of rebel tías, rise up to reclaim their city―and in the process, unlock Rivas’s connection to Three Rivers itself. An adventure that only the acclaimed Fernando A. Flores could dream up, Brother Brontë is a mordant, gonzo romp through a ruined world that, in its dysfunction, tyranny, and disparity, feels uncannily like our own. With his most ambitious book yet, Flores once again bends what fiction can do, in the process crafting a moving and unforgettable story of perseverance.

2nd Saturday "Not quite a book club" in the Richmond District

Show up having read a book\* you want to talk about. Get a beverage and/or food inside the cafe. We will probably meet outside in Bazaar Cafe's back garden.\*\* (The garden is accessible through an alley. There is a door to the alley next to the register inside. You can also go directly to the back garden from the street via the alley entrance on the right side of the right Cafe window.) Once you've spotted the group, we will introduce ourselves and have a brief period of chit chat. Then we will go around our group each talking about the (different!) books we read. Afterwards, you are welcome to stick around and chat. If you have a physical book you are done reading and want to offer other folks in the group, you are welcome to do that, but there is absolutely no obligation to do so. \*Any book! Could be a graphic novel, or non-fiction, or fiction, or a mystery or a romance novel or SciFi or Fantasy! \*\*If it is raining or a really bad air day from wildfires, it may be too crowded inside Bazaar Cafe to find a table, although it was raining during a few meetings early last year and the Bazaar cafe folks helped me stake out a table. In the event of rain and no space inside, I will probably move the event a few blocks away to Ilana Coffee or Royal Ground Coffee on Clement. I will message the group if we meet inside or if the location moves to another coffee shop.