Bookish in Berkeley
San Francisco may be the center of Northern California book culture, but we seem to make do in Berkeley, here on the other side of the bay:
The University of California Press recently held one of their excellent sidewalk sales, offering damaged and overstock paperback titles for just $5 each. Charlie and I ended up walking the two two blocks back to the office lugging almost two dozen UC Press books between the two of us; he goes for history, I go for sociology. (Wendy held out—she’s been trying to avoid temptation as she valiantly struggles to hold down the size of her bookshelves.)
Last night, I saw Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk read from a collection of essays, newly translated into English. I first discovered Pamuk after seeing local Berkeley booksellers handselling his works; I’d been meaning to ask friends if they wanted to go to the reading, but forgot to ask. I was pleasantly surprised to see old and new friends at the event, part of the community of avid local readers—perhaps one of the pleasures of living in a somewhat smaller city.
Our neighborhood keeps getting more bookish. The Other Change of Hobbit, an excellent science fiction and fantasy bookstore that lists on AbeBooks, is located right across the street from our office; they just celebrated their 30th anniversary. Eastwind Books of Berkeley, an Asian-American bookstore that lists on Biblio.com, opened up in our neighborhood back in 1996. The central branch of the Berkeley Public Library reopened in 2002, just three blocks away from us, and we had a nicely-designed Half Price Books open up across the street last year. I just heard that the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, also a block away, launched its own Berkeley Rep book club.
I’m disappointed about the closure of Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue, but Berkeley’s still book country.
[Now Reading: Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War by William Saletan]