Poets 11

A Poets 11 reading is happening here at the Mission branch on Monday, August 25, at 6:30 PM!! Poets 11 is an annual event that celebrates San Francisco’s rich literary community and thriving poetry scene. The event is sponsored and organized by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman. The 11 is in reference to San Francisco's 11 supervisorial districts. Residents of each of the districts are encouraged to submit their poems, and a few poets from each district are chosen to read their works at a Poets 11 event held at a specific branch library within each district. Poets from the 9th supervisorial district (which includes the Mission District) will be reading their poems here at the Mission branch on Monday, August 25, starting at 6:30 PM. The poets will not be announced publicly until the night of the event. We hope to see you here!!

Futuro Picante

I'm excited to announce that Futuro Picante will be performing at our Hispanic Heritage Month event here at the Mission branch library on Saturday, September 13, 2008. Futuro Picante is a band that is comprised of members of the Mission Cultural Center's Latin Jazz Band Program. They also performed at our recent open house back in May. Along with band directors José León (youth director of the Mission Cultural Center) and Miguel Govea, and with occasional help from local musicians, such as Osvaldo Carvajal, Camilo Landau and Sergio Duran, Futuro Picante consists of 14 musicians between the ages of 8 to 16 years old who play a variety of instruments. Here's a link to their MySpace page.

Encore catalog search

The San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) has added a new search feature to its Web site called Encore. It's being described as a "discovery tool." Basically it's an additional online SFPL catalog search option, similar to SFPL's own online catalog search function, but the difference is that Encore has more built-in searching and material discovery features, such as tag clouds (groupings of subject headings that link to other similar titles), easy ways to refine your search, and a great misspell correcter, similar to Google's, in case you misspell or mistype a title, author's name, or subject phrase. I highly recommend using Encore if you want to browse online for books about a particular subject and aren't having much luck with the SFPL Web site catalog search tools. You might just stumble upon something you may not have otherwise found. You can access Encore right from the SFPL homepage (it's the green search box under the yellow catalog search box in the upper left). Give it a try...

One City One Book

The new One City One Book title for 2008-09 has just been announced: West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story by Tamin Ansary. Check out all the info about the book and the author, including events with the author at the Main's Koret Auditorium. There are many copies on order for the library to meet the demand, but the Mission branch does have a couple copies on the shelf right now (as of 08/05/08). So get your copy while you can. If you read this post and find that our copies are checked out, it's never too late to reserve a copy!

The Complete Persepolis

I'm happy to report that The Complete Persepolis is circulating really well. Of course, that's due in part to it being the San Francisco Public Library's (SFPL) current On the Same Page selection for July-August. If you don't already know, On the Same Page is the SFPL's bimonthly book club. Every two months we choose a book with the intent of getting San Franciscans to read and discuss the same book.

The Complete Persepolis is a graphic novel. It is a moving, humanistic story told in words and pictures about the author's coming of age in Tehran, Iran, before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It is also an informative look at how the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution affected the lives of normal Iranian citizens. Satrapi's Persepolis was originally published in two parts (Persepolis and Persepolis 2), but in 2007 Pantheon Books combined the two in one volume called The Complete Persepolis. That is the version of which we have purchased multiple copies for On the Same Page. I highly recommend reserving a copy for pickup at the Mission branch, since all our copies are usually checked out. I want to also point out that the Mission branch has Spanish language versions of Persepolis, divided into four parts.

Also, in 2007 the animated film version of Persepolis was released. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film (but lost to Ratatouille). SFPL has the DVD on order right now. It should be available soon to reserve and check out.