November 2021... News, Events and What We are Reading

With Much Gratitude

We have much to be grateful for this past year and with Thanksgiving upon us, what better time to reflect on how fortunate we are. We have all experienced health concerns and challenges – try running a brick & mortar retail bookstore in a global pandemic! – still, we are the lucky ones.

In this world of ongoing uncertainty, we mustn't lose focus on the things we are most grateful for – and that would include our health and well-being, but also our loyal customers. You are like family and friends and have helped us navigate these treacherous times.

While we continue to proceed with caution, please know that the holiday spirit is alive and well at Sausalito Books by the Bay. We hope you will come share some seasonal cheer with us. Small Business Saturday is this weekend – a reminder that you make a BIG impact when you shop at SMALL local businesses. We will have complimentary coffee, warm spiced cider and hot mulled wine all weekend.

Meanwhile, spend the long Thanksgiving weekend with good friends – and that would include your favorite books!

Heartfelt thanks from all of us at Books by the Bay.
Cheryl

Past Events Photo Gallery

Let us Host Your Special Event or Group

Whether you stage a breakfast birthday party in our parklette outdoors or your book club huddles in the back of our shop after hours, we are happy to host and help stage an event for you, including presentations on the best books to read. We’ve done special programs for The

San Francisco Symphony League, The Sausalito Woman’s Club and Sausalito Village as well as other private parties.

RIGHT: Janet Chapman, local author & President of the San Francisco Symphony League invited league members for an afternoon of lite bites and wine. She spoke about her two books on Italy and I offered additional reading recommendations to the gathered group.

New Artist In Residence

Sausalito artist Kay Carlson is our new artist “in residence”.

Her stunning work will be featured on our gallery wall through January. You can meet the artist and enjoy her beautiful paintings at a reception slated for December 7th, 5:30pm. A California colorist landscape painter, Kay’s passion is to express how light transforms color, creating visual drama.

She works en plein air, exploring the Bay Area, and creates larger oil paintings in her Sausalito waterfront studio. Carlson’s work has been featured at the Robert Mondavi Winery, Marin MOCA, the Marin Community Foundation, Gumps of San Francisco, Charles Campbell Gallery, and the Sausalito Art Festival.

Upcoming Events

Unless otherwise noted, all events are live, in person at 100 Bay Street, Sausalito.

November 26th

Black Friday

Shop special offers on books!

We will open early at 9am.

November 27th

Small Business Saturday

Make a BIG impact—Shop SMALL. 

Shop local and support our small businesses! 

We will be offering complimentary coffee, warm spiced cider and hot mulled wine

November 28th

Happy Hanukkah

Begins at sundown

December 1st, 4pm

Sausalito Village Holiday Book Talk

Cheryl Popp presents The Best Books for Holiday Reading & Gift Giving

Come enjoy hot cider, wine, and nibbles as we share with Sausalito Village members.

December 7th, 5:30 – 7:30pm

Celebration of Style & Holiday Gift Ideas

A reception for our new artist in residence Sausalito Artist Kay Carlson. Book signing with local authors Chase Reynolds Ewald & Heather Sandy Hebert. Exclusive wine tasting with JCB Wine Concierge Anne Minkin.

Lite bites and libations will be served.

Curated gifts for everyone on your list and after-hours shopping specials!

December 13th, 5:30pm

Holiday Soiree

We will be sharing a cup of holiday cheer and talking about our favorite books for the holidays, which will include suggestions from me and my staff. We will also be having a brief discussion about the two, little, short books we suggested people read: A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote and Address Unknown by Katherine Kressman Taylor

Register inside the shop or call 415.887.9967

December 14th, 5pm

Bourbon Tasting and Book Launch

Bourbon Tasting with Author

Clay Risen

Join renowned whiskey expert, New York Times reporter and author Clay Risen for the launch of his newest book Bourbon: The Story of Kentucky Whiskey and for a virtual tasting party featuring his favorite spirits. We’ll be sipping together at an historic mansion in their private cellar with Clay guiding us (remotely from New York) through the virtues and characteristics of the best bourbons as well as their history and lore. The evening includes a beautiful boxed copy of his new book (a great gift for yourself or another bourbon lover) and promises to be a spirited start to the holiday season.

Space is limited, so reserve now by calling 415-887-9967. $50 for tasting; $100 for the tasting and the book

December 18th, 11am–Noon

Childrens Holiday Party

Calling all Kids! Kris Kringle will be on-site with his elves

Holiday cookies & candy canes, picture books, music and holiday crafts for kids.

December 25th

Merry Christmas!

Closed for the day.

We are at home with family & friends sipping eggnog.

December 31st

New Years Eve

We will be closing early at 3pm.

Happy New Year!

Wines of The Month

If you don’t already have wines with which to toast your turkey, family and friends this Thursday, we have a great selection for you to choose from! How convenient can that be!

Domaine Carneros / Tattinger Sparkling Win
Gary Farrell Pinot Noir
Patz & Hall Chardonnay
Martin Ray Pinot Noir
Cakebread Sauvignon Blanc

Monday, December 13th, 5:30pm

Holiday Soiree

We will be sharing a cup of holiday cheer and talking about our favorite books for the holidays, which will include suggestions from me and my staff. We will also be having a brief discussion about the two, little, short books we suggested people read: A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote and Address Unknown by Katherine Kressman Taylor

Book club participants receive a 10% discount if you buy the book from us.

If you are interested in joining our book club, please email me cheryl@sausalitobooksbythebay.com or sign up at the bookshop on your next visit!

Our book club is almost always the SECOND TUESDAY of every month. 

Register inside the shop or call 415.887.9967

SAVE THE DATE – Next Book Club January 11th

What's New

We are now carrying one of my favorite tabletop, card and gift collections – Caspari – which you won’t find anywhere else in Southern Marin! Classy cocktail napkins, guest towels, paper plates and place cards, notecards, holiday party crackers, gift wrap & tags. Every day and holiday designs.

Holiday Shopping

Be on the lookout for a Holiday Gift Guide coming your way via email. We’ve got something for everyone on your list…and when in doubt, we’ve got GIFT CARDS!

 Sip & Shop with Cheryl – set up an appointment with me (or any of my bookselling staff) and we’ll take care of everyone on your gift list while sipping a lovely glass of wine

 We’ll be featuring some fun pre-packaged boxes that pair books with other gifts including: “The Wine & Dine Duet” (wine a cookbook and Amphora olive oil); a “Treasure Box” for kids; a “Pamper” kit (lotions, aromatherapy candle & book); plus other wines, elegant teas and special gifts paired with great books to savor on a wintery day.

 While we offer free gift wrapping, if you like to do it yourself, we have a great selection of holiday wrapping, ribbon and gift cards.

 Remember that we ship for free anywhere in the US but also remember that in order for gifts to arrive by Christmas, you need to shop and ship early!

What We're Reading

Three Precious Days

Ann Patchett

A favorite author of mine, this book is a collection of essays about what has touched her life including living in Europe, her love of children’s books, her husband’s hobby of flying and getting Tom Hanks to narrate her most recent novel Dutch House. If you are a fan of any of her stories, this will not disappoint. Angela K.

Please Scream Inside Your Heart: Breaking News & Nervous Breakdowns in the Year That Wouldn’t End

Dave Pell

Local writer and news junkie Dave Pell – the Internet's Managing Editor who brings us his daily digest of news via Next Draft – now offers us a comprehensive chronicle of 2020. A frightening reminder of how the world went sideways, it is a disturbing recap, but also comical and entertaining. The book is a series of snapshots that are smart and witty, all based on factual data (!) and all laced with Dave’s insights and editorial. It should be on everyone’s shelf. So we don’t forget. Cheryl P.

The Beatles: Get Back

The Beatles

Let it Be (aka Get Back) has long been considered the nadir of the band's career. Their recordings were taken away from them and bastardized by Phil Spector. The resultant documentary focused only on the adversarial, while in later interviews all four of them stressed how re-energizing and positive the sessions were. Anticipating Peter Jackson's multi-part documentary, which will utilize more than 50 hours of unseen footage, this day-by-day retelling, with hundreds of unpublished photos, should rescue the band's swan song from its purgatory. Jeff B.

The Sentence

Louis Erdrich

Louise Erdrich is back with another rich story, this time spanning November 2019 – November 2020. Yes, this takes place in the months of the pandemic, but Eridrich has created a fun and motley group of booksellers that are being haunted by a recently deceased customer (set in her own bookshop, wherein she makes the occasional cameo in the narrative). In a book about friendship, marriage and bookselling, this is an enjoyable story despite the background. Angela K.

Poison For Breakfast

Lemony Snicket

A reflective little book about stories and about loving to read. Snicket's latest has a compelling plot – as you might guess, it begins with a man swallowing the last bite of breakfast moments before receiving a message that his food was poisoned. However, the real delights come from when the author diverges from the main plot, partaking in pithy bonus anecdotes and thoughtful asides. Matthew K.

Fresh Water For Flowers

Valerie Perrin

There’s a reason that this book is wildly popular in Europe and is just itching to be picked up by American readers. The story starts out simply enough, a woman who tends a cemetery in a village in France. But Violette’s story and the incredible translation of this novel by Hildegarde Serle is worth savoring every wonderful word. We get swept back in time and there’s romance and humor and drama. It will pull you in on the first page! Evan A.

The Chain of Chance

Stanislaw Lem

Both for my own pleasure, and wanting to find something wonderful to recommend, I've started, and ultimately abandoned, a dozen books the last two months, disappointed in all of them. I may profess not to read fiction, but I do, and so instead offer one of my all-time favorites; but how do I talk up a mid-70s Polish novel, by the SciFi/philosopher author of Solaris, which is a wickedly-intelligent send-up of the detective genre? Exactly. Jeff B.

Dhalgren

Samual R. Delany

A mysterious wanderer known only as The Kid enters the city of Bellona, which has been set apart from the rest of the United States by a mysterious event. What follows is a story where the night sky changes, about poetry, gender, race, and personhood. The novel is challenging and very surreal, full of both vivid imagination and stark reality. Matthew K.

Shelf Life

Nadia Wassef

In this memoir, Wassef details the journey of opening an independent bookstore with her sister and a best friend in Cairo in 2002. Along the way, you learn that bookselling anywhere is filled with similar joys and problems, but also unique to this story are the challenges of being a female business owner in a male dominated country. Wassef also gives a history of Egypt from the time of the pharaohs to current day.  Angela K

Narrative Poems

C. S. Lewis

Though he is best known for his prose writing, C. S. Lewis' poetry chops are not to be ignored. This volume contains four fantastical stories in beautiful verse, about knights, magic, and the workings of spirits. My personal favorite is "Dymer," a heroic epic/parody begun when the author was only 17. Matthew K.

Ocean  – A Global Odyssey

Sylvia Earle

Maybe the top gift book of the holiday season for anyone who loves the sea. A richly illustrated overview of the life force that defines and sustains our planet, written by world-renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle. The large format book is an inspiration, describing the evolution, beauty, and impact of our ocean; the challenges it faces (climate change, plastic, overfishing), and the myriad ways we can help protect it. Cheryl P.

Community Supported Bookstore Program

By opening a CSB account with us – or adding money to an existing account – you provide us with valuable working capital to help make ends meet during this dramatic economic downturn.

For more information CSB program

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