Upcoming Events

NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED (Book View Cafe, Trade Paperback, $19.99) with authors Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Marie Brennan, Nancy Jane Moore, Deborah Ross and Dave Smeds Saturday, February 10th at 3:00 pm



Writers With Drinks with authors Steph Burt, Jasmine Guillory, Ellen Klages, Angela Pneuman, and Molly Sauter  (at the Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA) Saturday, February 10th at 7:30 pm

SF in SF with authors Nancy Jane Moore and Trina Robbins (at the American Bookbinders Museum, 355 Clementina St, San Francisco) Sunday, February 11th at 6:30 pm

Patricia Bossano, NAHIA (Waterbearer Press, Trade Paperback, $15.99) Thursday, February 22nd at 6:00 pm

Ada Palmer, THE WILL TO BATTLE (Tor Books, Hardcover, $26.99) Saturday, February 24th at 3:00 pm

Tina LeCount Myers, THE SONG OF ALL (Night Shade Books, Hardcover $25.99 and Trade Paperback $14.99) Saturday, March 3rd at 3:00 pm

Mishell Baker, IMPOSTOR SYNDROME (Saga Press, Hardcover $29.99 and Trade Paperback, $15.99) and Seanan McGuire, TRICKS FOR FREE (DAW, Mass Market, $7.99)

February Building News

by Alan Beatts

Last month I told you all the things that were up in the air about the construction work on our new building on Haight Street.  In the past few weeks they've all been resolved and, in every case, the news is quite good.  Here's the current run-down:

Moving the Electrical Service
Great news on this front.  Last month I said that I was thinking that we'd just have to live with the odd little wall right in front of the door as you enter the place that houses the electrical meters, because PG&E was going to take forever and a day to approve moving them.  But, great news -- it turns out that the city building department trumps PG&E.  If we get the city permits to move the meters, then we can do the work regardless of whether PG&E gives us their blessing or not.  So, it's full steam ahead on that job.  Antonius Dintcho, our electrician, has already arranged for a pre-permit meeting with the inspector.  He suggested it and I think it's a great idea.  It costs a couple hundred bucks but the inspector comes down before we get the permits and start work.  We can discuss with him what we want to do and he'll give us pointers on how he'd like us to do it.

Without this step, we'd need to get the permits, do all the rough work, and then have it inspected.  For something simple, like putting in some outlets or new lights, that's fine, but for something as complicated (and expensive) as relocating meters and panels, there is rooms for interpretation about what the electrical code requires.  By having a pre-inspection we reduce the chances that, after doing a ton of work, the inspector ends up being dissatisfied with our interpretation of the code, and makes us tear a bunch of it out.

The one thing that we will need to wait for PG&E to do is increase the amount of electrical service coming into the building.  But, that's not a problem since we can put in all the gear for 400 amp service, but use smaller main breakers so that it'll be correct for the existing 200 amp service.  Then, in the fullness of time, when PG&E gets around to us -- they upgrade the service, we swap the main breakers out and we're all set.  And, swapping the breakers is only a ten minute job (granted, a sweaty, nervous ten minute job -- at least if you're me; 400 amps at 240 volts will kill a person very, very, extra-crispy dead).

January Bestsellers

Hardcovers
1) Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
2) Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
3) Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant
4) Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
5) Dark State by Charles Stross
6) La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
7) Autonomous by Annalee Newitz
8) The Power by Naomi Alderman
9) Artemis by Andy Weir
10) Iron Gold by Pierce Brown

Trade Paperbacks
1) Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
2) The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
3) Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor
4) Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
5) Robots vs. Fairies edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe
6) Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
7) All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
8) The Tree by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun
9) Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin
10) The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville

Mass Market Paperbacks
1) Who Fears Death? by Nnedi Okorafor
2) Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
3) Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
4) Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
5) Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
6) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
7) Old Man's War by John Scalzi
8) Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
9) The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
10) The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

February News

* Overheard in the Store:

"I'm going to make glitter prints with it.  How often do you get to make art with your internal organs?"

"Seriously surreal.  I'm inadvertently eavesdropping on these 4 Well-Heeled White Women of a Certain Age, & they're discussing their preferred CBD concentrations."

"I'm going to chop your head off! I love you!"

"If you're equally terrified of everything, you're kind of fearless."


* The world has lost of the best writers of the last century.  Acclaimed poet, essayist, translator and author Ursula K. Le Guin passed on January 22nd 2018 at the age of 88.

--An obituary from space.com: https://www.space.com/39470-ursula-k-le-guin-obituary.html

--5 Canadian speculative writers talk about their favorite Ursula K. Le Guin novel: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/23/580109007/ursula-le-guin-whose-novels-plucked-truth-from-high-fantasy-dies-at-88

-- Author Nisis Shawl remembers Ursula K. Le Guin: https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/author-nisi-shawl-remembers-a-literary-hero-ursula-k-le-guin/