Articles from the 2006 Member Reading

The articles appearing on this page represent a sample from the BATW 2006 Member Reading, held in San Francisco on August 19th.

Año Nuevo Elephant Seals

by David Bolling
Odyssey Magazine - September, 2005

  • Let me be perfectly honest. This is a story about voracious sex, binge eating, male supremacy, polygamy, child abandonment, and radical obesity. It makes Animal House look like a garden party. It is not pretty. Read the article...

Paris Stories - Progressive Supper

by Jacqueline Harmon Butler
New Orleans Times Picayune

  • Ernest Hemingway called Paris a "movable feast," and I have always agreed with him. On my last night in Paris, I decided to have my own movable feast-a progressive supper, with each course in a different restaurant. I wanted the restaurants to be within walking distance from one another, the last one near my hotel in the 6th arrondissement. Read the article...

The Trout Baron

by Diane LeBow
France: A Love Story: Women Write About the French Experience (Seal Press)

  • A ten-year romance with a French Baron in Brittany: where will it lead? I found Paris especially difficult to leave that morning. Familiar buildings and monuments glistened with fresh snow that had fallen during the night. Teary-eyed, I almost fell as I skidded over the medieval cobblestones of my Marais apartment courtyard for the last time. The cabby studied me in his rearview mirror. Read the article...

Zen and the Art of Houseboat Living

by Donna Peck
Preservation Magazine -- March/April, 2005

  • IN 1989, A computer software designer named Eric Sutton was riding his bike around Sausalito, Calif., in search of office space for his first company. He found a building with agreat view: It overlooked the S.S. Vallejo, an old twin paddle wheeler docked in San Francisco Bay. When Sutton wanted more than a view of the boat, he decided to move aboard with some friends. “It was falling to bits, but it was definitely a magical place,” he recalls. Read the article...

An Evening With Jules et Jim

by Gary Singh
San Francisco Bay Guardian -- April, 2004

  • On any given Saturday night in Quebec City a popular bar called Jules et Jim transplants visitors to a likely setting for a David Lynch flick. Dark, smoky, its walls adorned with old movie photos befitting a bar named after the classic Francois Truffaut film, Jules et Jim is populated by an eclectic menagerie of characters. After ordering a pint of Boreal Rousse from the only bartender merciful enough to speak English, I take a seat at a knee-high table and begin eavesdropping on the surrounding barflies. Read the article...