Each month, we heartily recommend our favorite new book.  We even guarantee it 100% or your money back.  This month's choice was again endorsed by multiple Green Appler's (Sparks and Aeri).  Here's our fun video, and here's their "shelf-talker":

Following on the heels of Remainder (2007), a book Zadie Smith called "one of the greatest English novels of the last ten years," comes Tom McCarthy's dazzlingly complex and riveting novel, C. Set at the turn of the 20th century, C - a letter signifying a number of things, from communications to coincidence to cocaine, from ciphers to Cairo to crackpots - tells the story of Serge Carrefax (another contributing "C") as he navigates through the onset of modernity, moving from an idyllic childhood in the British countryside to a series of tumultuous and formative events (he's an airman in WW1, a POW, a debaucherous student in post-war London, a spy in Egypt...). As much an adventure story as a novel of ideas, C is unlike anything you will read this year - which is why we're so excited to select it as our "Book of the Month."

PS.  The book arrives on Tuesday, September 7.

Come check out local favorite Rebecca Schall's newest collection, Historic Photos of San Francisco in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. She'll be discussing these photos, along with her previous books, Historic Photos of San Francisco, and Historic Photos of the Presidio. This is your chance to see (or remember) what San Francisco looked like in the good old days, and get your signed copies of her beautiful tributes to The City. 


DETAILS:  7:00pm, Tuesday, September 7
at Green Apple Books
506 Clement @ 6th Ave.

September 8: JOSEPH MATTSON, author of Empty the Sun

Joseph Mattson will be cruising into the store on the evening of September 8th to read from and sign his debut novel Empty the Sun, out in September. How can you go wrong with a pre-apocalyptic cross-country race to bury the murdered past, culminating in a gunfight with God? To top it off, the book comes with a CD that sets this beautifully reckless novel of transgressive loss to an open-road, open-whiskey soundtrack composed by Drag City recording artist Six Organs of Admittance.
Come experience Joseph Mattson's fast-paced and gritty debut live and in person, and pick up your signed copy of Empty the Sun while you're at it (everything included but the whiskey). 

DETAILS: 7:00 pm, Wednesday, September 8
at Green Apple Books
506 Clement @ 6th Ave.


September 9: NICK ZINNER (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), photographer of Please Take Me Off the Guest List at the Hemlock Tavern

Come check out the latest in a series of creative collaborations by New York City artists and friends Zachary Lipez, Nick Zinner (guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and Stacy Wakefield, titled Please Take Me Off the Guest List. The trio will be hanging out with us at the Hemlock Tavern for a fantastic mixed-media performance of prose, photography, and music, bringing to life their lovely and multi-faceted project. 

In Please Take Me off the Guest List, Zachary Lipez's essays recount his adventures as a bartender, drug abuser, bookstore clerk, metal fan, miserable adolescent and relentless skirt chaser. His inimitable voice walks the line between self-loathing and hedonistic delight and is biting, moving and extremely funny. Nick Zinner's photographs evoke the world he travels with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. His always present camera documents decadent late nights as well as blissfully fresh sun-dappled landscapes. His images are rich in narrative and unwaveringly optimistic. The book is edited and designed by their longtime collaborator, book artist Stacy Wakefield. The unique structure she has devised for this book presents Zachary's essays as separate books-within-the-book while the stories built by the photographs course through and around them. Zachary, Nick, and Stacy have produced three previous books together: No Seats on the Party Car, Slept in Beds, and I Hope You Are All Happy Now.

We're anticipating that the limited space for this event is sure to fill up quickly, so be sure to get to the Hemlock Tavern early this one. See you there. 

DETAILS: 7:00 pm, Thursday, September 9
at the Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk Street (@ Sutter)
San Francisco, CA


September 13: RICK BASS, author of Nashville Chrome

We'll be hosting Rick Bass as he discusses his new novel, Nashville Chrome. The novel takes place in the late 1950s and recounts the tale of the Brown siblings, a family band enjoying unprecedented international success, rivaled only by their longtime friend Elvis Presley. By turns mesmerizing and heartbreaking, the novel jumps between the Browns' promising past and harsh present.  Nashville Chrome hits all the right grace notes with its vivid evocation of an era in American music, while at its heart it is a wrenching meditation on the complexities of fame and of one family--forgotten yet utterly unforgettable when reclaimed by Bass.

Rick Bass' fiction has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes, awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Most recently, his memoir Why I Came West was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Check out Nashville Chrome and don't miss Rick Bass in the store on September 13th.

DETAILS: 7:00 pm, Monday, September 13
at Green Apple Books
506 Clement @ 6th Ave.


September 14: DAVE EGGERS, author of Zeitoun

The busiest writer in San Francisco, Dave Eggers, will be stopping by Green Apple at noon on Tuesday, September 14th to sign copies of his award-winning Zeitoun, newly available in paperback. This is part of the San Francisco Public Library's One City, One Book program.  Read more about it here.

Zeitoun is a compelling and urgent work of narrative non-fiction that, through the lens of one family's harrowing experience, examines the state of post-hurricane New Orleans and its national and international context in all its complexity. It's tough to put it better or offer more aptly high praise than the New York Times Book Review did, saying, "Imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina... Eggers' tone is pitch-perfect-suspense blended with just enough information to stoke reader outrage and what is likely to be a typical response: How could this happen in America?"

Eggers is also the editor of McSweeney's, co-founder of the local non-profit writing center 826 Valencia, and author of the Pulitzer-finalist memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Don't miss this opportunity to meet and talk to him here in the store, and, if you haven't already, pick up a signed copy of Zeitoun.

DETAILS: 12 noon, Tuesday, September 14
at Green Apple Books
506 Clement @ 6th Ave.


September 16: Saul Austerlitz, author of Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy

Saul Austerlitz returns to our Granny Smith Room on September 16th to talk about his newest book, Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy. Running the gamut of film history from "City Lights" to "Knocked Up," Another Fine Mess retells the story of American film from the perspective of its unwanted stepbrother--the comedy. Each chapter is devoted primarily to a single performer or director as Another Fine Mess retraces the steps of the American comedy film, filling in the gaps and following the connections that link Mae West to Doris Day, or W. C. Fields to Will Ferrell.

Saul Austerlitz is a New York City based writer whose work has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, the Boston Globe, and other publications. He is the author of Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes.

Details: 7 pm, Thursday, September 16
at Green Apple Books
506 Clement @ 6th Ave.