80 West Portal, San Francisco, CA 94127
415-564-8080
www.bookshopwestportal.com
Open 10:00 AM - 9:00 PM, Every Day

Dear Friends & Neighbors,

Thank you for supporting us during our annual Pre-Holiday Sale last weekend!

If you missed the sale (or even if you didn't), here's another opportunity to support your local independent bookseller--and take care of everyone on your holiday shopping list. Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, and we are celebrating by launching our 100 top picks for the holiday season. All of these books will be discounted 20% through the end of the year! Look for the red sale stickers throughout the store.

For fans of audiobooks, come in tomorrow for a free audiobook download, courtesy of our partner Libro.fm!

As always, we provide gift wrapping service free of charge.

Another great reason to shop with us: Saturday is also the West Portal Merchants Association's Annual Snow Festival, featuring REAL SNOW in the Courtyard! You can enjoy these activities from 11- 4:

Visit with Anna and Else from 12-2pm
Build a snowman with REAL snow
Photos with Santa Claus
Face Painting
Snacks and refreshments
DJ - Fun and festive music
Swag bags & promotions

Here's a small sample of our Holiday Picks:

Moonglow
by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon's new novel, a "fictional nonfiction," is built from the stories told to him over the course of a week in 1989 by his dying grandfather. From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York's Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the American Century, the novel revisits an entire era through a single life.

"His writing is joyful, his timing and humor have grown only more impeccable, and his characters still live with you long after you turn the final page." - BookPage

QB: My Life Behind the Spiral
by Steve Young & Jeff Benedict

Sports fans will appreciate this account by Steve Young - considered one of the all-time top college and pro football quarterbacks, a two-time NFL Most Valuable player, a Super Bowl champion, and a Hall of Famer.

"Young is also a private man here owning up to how battered he sometimes felt as an ordinary-sized man playing against some real hulks, and how he suffered from anxiety that almost kept him from the field." - Library Journal

Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders
by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, Ella Morton

"A joy to read and reread." - Neil Gaiman

You don't have to leave home to visit the far corners of the world, thanks to this inspiring book of wonder and wanderlust. Atlas Obscura celebrates the most curious destinations around the globe, with compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, charts and maps.

Swing Time
by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith's new novel follows two brown girls who dream of being dancers - but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. This close but complicated childhood friendship ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.

"Swing Time is an acidly funny, fluently global, and head-spinning novel about the quest for meaning, exaltation, and love." - Booklist, starred review

I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark
by Debbie Levy (illust. by Elizabeth Baddeley)

Young readers can get to know celebrated Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the first picture book about her life, as she proves that disagreeing does not make you disagreeable! Justice Ginsburg has spent a lifetime disagreeing: disagreeing with inequality, arguing against unfair treatment, and standing up for what's right for people everywhere.

Small Victories: Recipes, Advice + Hundreds of Ideas for Home Cooking Triumphs
by Julia Turshen

Here's a great gift for cooks! Julia Turshen, who has coauthored cookbooks with many big names (Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dana Cowin, and more), has a new book with a foreword by Ina Garten. It is full of a broad mix of classic recipes, and those Turshen has adapted with her own unique twists, such as her recipes for Old Bay Shrimp Cocktail and the Happy Wife, Happy Life Chocolate Cake. Each recipe is accompanied by beautiful photos. Turshen also provides several variations on the recipes to give cooks more flexibility.

Born to Run
by Bruce Springsteen

Music lovers will enjoy Bruce Springsteen's long-awaited memoir, which takes them on "an entertaining, high-octane journey from the streets of New Jersey to all over the world. A natural storyteller, Springsteen commands our attention, regaling us with his tales of growing up poor with a misanthropic father and a mother who had endless faith in people. The Boss delights us with humorous stories of his first guitar, which he couldn't get his seven-year-old fingers around, and his inspiration to become a musician after seeing Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show." - Publishers Weekly

Please visit our website for more Holiday Picks
and other upcoming events.