Throughout 2025, Problem Library is partnering with Western Neighborhoods Project (WNP), Sean Connelly (SFSU Humanities lecturer emeritus), Bazaar Cafe, and Green Apple Books to present WNP Book Club.

The club is broken into two parts: Silent Reading Parties at Bazaar Cafe and Book Discussions at Problem Library. Discussions will be led by Sean and Nicole Meldahl (WNP’s Executive Director), supported by photographs from the OpenSFHistory archive, and complimentary light refreshments.

Join us for the first of these as we chat about Vandover and the Brute by Frank Norris, the featured title for January—February 2025.

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Published posthumously in 1914, Vandover and the Brute has been described as an “unflinching” portrait of 19th-century San Francisco. It follows a privileged spendthrift named Vandover, the son of a wealthy owner of slum properties in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. He dreams of being an artist but, lacking self-discipline, succumbs to the many…ahem…distractions the city had to offer in the 1890’s.

Although it is often overshadowed by Norris’s more notable (controversial) works like McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, the descriptions of life in the city presented in Vandover will be of interest to any aficionado of San Francisco history.

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Vandover’s trip to the Cliff House, which was still trying to shake off its less-than-savory reputation, is what caught our attention as west side historians.

Even if you didn’t read the novel (although we encourage that you do), we invite you to join us for an evening communing with neighborhood bibliophiles.