Books about the Bay Area?

June 5, 2012 6:14 PM

I'm feeling nostalgia for the Bay Area at the moment. What are some books that take place there?

Offhand, I can think of Bill Pronzini's books, but, while I'm a great fan of mysteries, I'm not a particular fan of his books.

I'll take anything on the scale from great literature to brain candy. Fiction is not obligatory, but I'd prefer non-fiction to skew towards the 'popular nonfiction' end of the spectrum. The holy grail might be a decent police procedural.

posted by hoyland to writing & language (35 answers total)

"Tales of the City"
posted by cazoo at 6:18 PM on June 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant has set 2 of her 3 book series (one fantasy, one science fiction) in the Bay Area. The October Daye series sticks pretty close to home, while the Newsflesh trilogy travels in and out. But both of them are clearly written by a local who knows her stuff and does the descriptions of life there (even after the zombie apocalypse) very well.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:32 PM on June 5, 2012

Came here to say Tales of the City, too. Such silly, silly fun.
posted by smirkette at 6:32 PM on June 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Carter Beats the Devil.
posted by duckus at 6:34 PM on June 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thirding Tales of the City.
posted by dfan at 6:39 PM on June 5, 2012

The Maltese Falcon
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:41 PM on June 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, of course.

Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins character usually works in LA but visits San Francisco on a case in Cinnamon Kiss.

Peter Plate's noir novels are set in SF, the one I enjoyed the most was Fogtown.
posted by jamaro at 6:42 PM on June 5, 2012

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

Little Brother.
posted by DuckGirl at 6:50 PM on June 5, 2012

Alive in Necropolis: "a fresh, imaginative debut novel about a young police officer in northern California struggling to keep the peace—and maintain a grip on reality—in a town where the dead outnumber the living."

Previously featured by SFPL in the One City One Book program.
posted by tantivy at 7:00 PM on June 5, 2012

Christopher Moore has written a somewhat funny trilogy about being a vampire living in San Francisco: Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, You Suck: A Love Story, and Bite Me: A Love Story. Certainly falls more in the 'Brain Candy' spectrum, along the lines of Dead Like Me.
posted by StickyC at 7:07 PM on June 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Most of Laurie R. King's Kate Martinelli novels, and one of the Mary Russell ones.
posted by slenderloris at 7:07 PM on June 5, 2012

How about a San Francisco of the dystopian near future? Virtual Light by William Gibson is SF set in SF (sorry, couldn't resist) after a big earthquake makes the Bay Bridge unsafe for traffic, and squatters have set up an off-the-grid community on the damaged structure. It's a very vividly imagined environment; every time I go under the bridge on the streetcar I think about that book.
posted by Quietgal at 7:12 PM on June 5, 2012

Another vote for Tales of the City.
posted by willbaude at 7:21 PM on June 5, 2012

Two Years Before the Mast (full ebook) is mostly about sailing off of southern California but there is a epilogue about San Fransisco before the Gold Rush.
posted by hydrobatidae at 7:45 PM on June 5, 2012

Fly High, Fly Low
posted by Lettuce_Leaves at 8:03 PM on June 5, 2012

My favorite San Francisco books are:

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe;

Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs by Hunter S. Thompson;

The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick;

and

Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson.

(A couple of these are supposedly non-fiction but I think we all know better.)
posted by bukvich at 9:03 PM on June 5, 2012

Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends and the sequels You Suck and Bite Me are all set in San Francisco. Even if you're burned out on all things vampire fiction like I am, the sheer hilarity of these novels overrides any "ugh vampires" feelings. Also, they feature Emperor Norton, one of my absolute favorite famous San Franciscans ever.
posted by yasaman at 9:36 PM on June 5, 2012

Infinite City is a recently published atlas of creative maps of San Francisco. I found it thought-provoking.
posted by eelgrassman at 9:37 PM on June 5, 2012

McTeague
posted by outlaw of averages at 10:11 PM on June 5, 2012

You may think of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as a Los Angeles story because it was the inspiration for Blade Runner, but the book's plot happens in large part on the post-apocalyptic Peninsula. I found it strangely recognizable.
posted by town of cats at 10:22 PM on June 5, 2012

Jennifer Egan's Visit From the Goon Squad takes place partly in San Francisco.
posted by gubenuj at 11:40 PM on June 5, 2012

Alive in Necropolis: "a fresh, imaginative debut novel about a young police officer in northern California struggling to keep the peace—and maintain a grip on reality—in a town where the dead outnumber the living."

I liked that book! Plus it's kind of a police procedural! With ghosts and stuff!
posted by clorox at 11:44 PM on June 5, 2012

The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth, a completely awesome novel in verse.
posted by Daily Alice at 5:14 AM on June 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

nthing Tales of the City, and Dashiell Hammet.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:47 AM on June 6, 2012

Novels set in San Francisco and the Bay Area

(Quite a lot to trawl through there, but it's divided by genre and you can skim it for your favorite authors.)
posted by col_pogo at 5:57 AM on June 6, 2012

Oops. I own a copy of Tales of the City. I had trouble keeping track of who was who the last time I started it, but not last night.

col_pogo, I was amused to note that that list even links back to Metafilter at the bottom.

I also remembered The Cuckoo's Egg, which I really enjoyed in junior high or so. That most of the action takes place at LBL is coincidental, though I do remember a Berkeley Bowl reference.
posted by hoyland at 6:23 AM on June 6, 2012

The Crying of Lot 49
posted by obscurator at 7:37 AM on June 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Adrian Tomine's earlier graphic novels Optic nerve, 32 stories, and Sleepwalk are set in Berkeley/Oakland area.
posted by ljesse at 9:11 AM on June 6, 2012

If you somehow haven't read it yet, Zodiac by Robert Graysmith is the book for you.
posted by allseeingabstract at 9:43 AM on June 6, 2012

The Basic Eight, by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), if you went to high school in SF. And seconding The Golden Gate, which is way more absorbing than 'novel in verse' might imply.
posted by yarrow at 11:15 AM on June 6, 2012

Alistair MacLean's The Golden Gate, about criminals kidnapping the US president and holding him hostage on the Golden Gate Bridge.

In addition to The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories and novels have lots of local details. The streetcars of Hammett's day are now Muni bus lines with the same route numbers.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:32 AM on June 6, 2012 [1 favorite]

Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness is all about it's San Francisco setting, and let me also second kirkaracha and the others recommending Hammett - the Continental Op is great, and The Maltese Falcon is a masterpiece. Hammett used lots of real streets and buildings in his stories, and there is a Dashiell Hammett Tour if you get really into them and want to see them in real life on a trip back.
posted by sumiami at 10:34 PM on June 6, 2012

Oh, and don't forget about Aaron Cometbus. Prolific writer of zines, not "books" per se, but majorly thorough Bay Area examinations, ruminations and oral histories.
posted by obscurator at 6:54 AM on June 7, 2012

Peter Beagle's Folk of the Air is set in Avicenna, a thinly fictionalized Berkeley.
posted by Zed at 10:37 AM on June 7, 2012

Butting in late, but The City, Not Long After is my second favorite post-apocalyptic San Francisco novel. The first is, of course, Virtual Light.
posted by bendy at 12:00 AM on August 6, 2012