Comic Book Clubs San Francisco

Book Club: "The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah

"The Nightingale" is being adapted into a movie starring Dakota Fanning and Elle Fanning - let's read and discuss the historical fiction novel by Kristin Hannah before the movie comes out! There are several copies available at the library so it should be easy to get. The location is TBD but will be in the Burlingame/San Mateo/Foster City area. We'll decide after the October meeting! Everyone will be waitlisted initially. Priority will be given to previous attendees of book club and regular attendees of the group. For details on attendance & waitlist, please see the "About us" description for the group. **Book Summary - "The Nightingale" by Kristin Hannah** Publication Year: 2015 Page Count: 440 Despite their differences, Vianne and Isabelle have always been close. Younger, bolder Isabelle lives in Paris, while Vianne is content with life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their child. But when the Second World War breaks out and Antoine is conscripted to fight, Isabelle is sent to the country by her father to help Vianne. As war develops, the strength of the sisters' relationship is put to the test. With life changing, and confronted by unbelievable horrors, Vianne and Isabelle find themselves responding in ways they never thought possible, as bravery and resistance take differing forms for each of the two sisters. Vivid and exquisite in its illumination of a time and place defined by atrocity, but also humanity and courage, Kristin Hannah's novel will provoke thought and discussion long after readers turn the final page.

Book Club: "Cat's People" by Tanya Guerrero

Halloween is coming up but instead of reading a scary horror story, let's read an uplifting tale where a black cat is a main character! We'll discuss "Cat's People" by Tanya Guerrero. There are several copies available at the library so it should be easy to get! The location is TBD but will be in the Burlingame/San Mateo/Foster City area. We'll decide after the September meeting! Everyone will be waitlisted initially. Priority will be given to previous attendees of book club and regular attendees of the group. For details on attendance & waitlist, please see the "About us" description for the group. **Book Summary - "Cat's People" by Tanya Guerrero** Publication Year: 2025 Page Count: 300 Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a resentment for the "crazy cat lady" label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On one of her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-It notes from a secret admirer at the spot where her favorite stray lives—a black cat named Cat. Like most cats, he is rather curious and sly, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless. Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half-sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early mid-life crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns her favorite bodega? When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves connected in their desire to care for him and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they've been searching for.

October 2026 Book Discussion: The Vegetarian by Han Kang

**Our October Book Has Been Chosen! 📚** **Thanks to everyone who voted! Our next Books & Brew read is:** **🌿 The Vegetarian — Han Kang** **Grab a copy, start reading, and join us for a great conversation!** **About the Book** **After a series of disturbing dreams, Yeong-hye makes the seemingly simple decision to stop eating meat. But as her family reacts with increasing confusion, anger, and attempts to control her, that decision becomes the beginning of a much more profound transformation.** **Told through the perspectives of those around Yeong-hye, The Vegetarian explores autonomy, desire, conformity, violence, and the ways we understand—or fail to understand—the people closest to us.** **Originally published in Korean and translated by Deborah Smith, Han Kang’s unsettling novel won the 2016 International Booker Prize and invites plenty of questions about identity, choice, and what happens when someone refuses to live according to the expectations placed upon them.** **──────────** **📸 Follow us on Instagram @booksandbrew_oakland for meetup photos, book announcements, and future events.**

CONSCIOUS GIRL LIT CLUB: Communion

Communion by bell hooks Inspired by: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWonXNrjW8j/

SF CogSci #33: Behave, by Robert Sapolsky

We're continuing Behave, by Robert Sapolsky - moving on from chapters 1-6, which we discussed last time, and doing the rest of the book. If you're attending in person, please be sure to register [here](https://luma.com/san-francisco-cognitive-science-reading--5c00) as well, so you can get into the building. Thank you! Tom

East Bay Women's Book Club October Meetup: True Biz

Hello, fellow female readers -- The book for the October Meetup is True Biz by Sara Novic. For those of you who are new, I will send out the address to my house by Monday, October 19. Looking forward to gathering together and discussing the book. Bonnie

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.

SFVS Members Only: Book Club October Meeting

**\*\*\*SFVS Members Only Event RSVP Via Zeffy Not Meetup\*\*\*** The RSVP invite was sent directly to members on 9/21. Please [message us](bookclub@sfvs.org) if [you are a member](https://www.sfvs.org/membership) and didn't receive an invite. Join fellow SFVS members for our October book club gathering where we will be discussing the first couple of sections of John Sanbonmatsu's 2025 book, The Omnivore's Deception. We will read to the end of Part II which is the first 119 pages. We'll read the rest of the book and discuss it in November. John Sanbonmatsu will be a featured speaker at VegFest on November 14, and members will be able to mingle with him following his talk. We look forward to another month of great conversation, connection, and community! Book Club is for SFVS Members only. If you are a new member and Zeffy does not let you RSVP, it's because we need to manually add you to the invite. Questions? Need help? Reach out to us at [bookclub@sfvs.org](mailto:bookclub@sfvs.org).

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.

October 21: Rachel Khong - My Dear You

NOTE: Meeting on the 21st this month! Third Weds, not second! **Recommended Stories:** * My Dear You * Serene * D Day This one has been getting some rave reviews and was a joint winner in our poll for October! Her novel *Real Americans* was highly successful and we're looking forward to reading her short form. **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:** Khong's first story collection and her swerve from realism into the surreal: afterlives, government race-perception drugs, ghost-conjuring cats — magic treated matter-of-factly, in service of grief, love, and identity.

October Book Club: Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

Living Better Book Club

NEW Start Time: 1:30 pm. Mark your calendar! Usually about seven or eight people show up FYI—even if they don't all sign up here. :) We will be reading and discussing **"A Keeper"** by Graham Norton. When Elizabeth Keane returns to Ireland after her mother’s death, she’s focused only on saying goodbye to that dark and dismal part of her life. Her childhood home is packed solid with useless junk, her mother’s presence already fading. But within this mess, she discovers a small stash of letters—and ultimately, the truth. Forty years earlier, a young woman stumbles from a remote stone house, the night quiet except for the constant wind that encircles her as she hurries deeper into the darkness away from the cliffs and the sea. She has no sense of where she is going, only that she must keep on. With wistful and evocative prose, A Keeper is sure to appeal to “fans of sensitive character studies” (Publishers Weekly) and brilliantly illustrates Graham Norton’s clear-eyed understanding of human nature and its darkest flaws. Should be fun. See you all there!