San Francisco Chronicle's book blog: Bookmarks

Although I have seen mention of the San Francisco Chronicle’s book blog, titled Bookmarks, almost every week in the Sunday book section, I have never actually checked it out until now. I like the topics there; they are a mixture of San Francisco Bay Area topics and national ones. The most recent post tells the sad story of the closing of Black Oak books in Berkeley, after 33 years. The post points out that even though independent bookstores are now, after a steep decline, holding their own, there are still closures, especially because such bookstores often operate on a very narrow profit margin. If you are interested, and especially if you live in the SF Bay Area, check it out at http://blog.sfgate.com/bookmarks/

Blog "Follower" Issues

Google has informed me that it no longer supports “followers” who follow from non-Google sources. If you are one of those who got “cut” as a follower in the past few days (I don’t know if you got any notice of this or not), you can either rejoin through Google, or just continue to read the blog as before, and even comment if you like, without “following.” And you can always contact me directly at vandricks@usfca.edu with questions or comments. Let me take this opportunity to say thanks very much to all of you who read the blog, either as official "followers" or not, and either regularly or occasionally.