Stephen Sparks
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ssparks.bsky.social
Stephen Sparks
@ssparks.bsky.social
“To disappear, but not completely, so that you can know it.” - Elias Canetti

Point Reyes Books (pointreyesbooks.bsky.social) & Wayfinder Bookshop in Marin County, CA
At the Sausalito Public Library.
December 27, 2025 at 10:14 PM
The Point Reyes variety of a white Christmas.
December 20, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Someone just asked if we could order them a copy of "The Protocols of the Zion Elderly".
December 19, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Now we're talking. Looking forward to it, @robertmoor.com.
December 8, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Maybe not the worst, but "Oh, people still buy books?" is a response I've heard more than once.
What’s the worst question someone can ask after you tell them your profession? For linguists, it’s definitely “how many languages do you speak?”, but I’m curious what else is happening to the rest of y’all out there?!
December 1, 2025 at 10:00 PM
It's the season of bored dads aimlessly patrolling the bookstore while their curious kids find things to read.
November 26, 2025 at 12:51 AM
"I remember Oppen, who seemed to me a model of how one should live as a poet, saying of some poet he thought of as mediocre, 'He’s not scared enough of poetry.'"
Eliot Weinberger, The Art of the Essay No. 4
“Except for my less than two years at Stony Brook, I’ve never been in any scene or community, ever.”
www.theparisreview.org
November 19, 2025 at 8:11 PM
I'd like to think this means that by comparison I make people appear more charming.
Just wrapped an event with @ssparks.bsky.social where we pitched books. My favorite review: “you were more charming than you often are.”
November 6, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Inspired by fellow booksellers, we at @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social will be donating Sunday profits in November to the SF-Marin Food Bank. You can donate directly to the food bank here: www.sfmfoodbank.org
November 4, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Reading lately
October 26, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Two of the best booksellers to do it visited @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social today. I've learned a lot from (and drank a lot with) Rick Simonson of Elliott Bay and even more from Paul Yamazaki of City Lights.
August 29, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Currently reading: @peterbrannen.bsky.social 's very good new book, The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything.
August 25, 2025 at 10:30 PM
This is a breathtaking and heartbreaking poem by @joriegraham.bsky.social
When the End Starts | Jorie Graham
all of us are shopping.Our lists are made out carefully.Don’t forget anything a voice calls out.Remember what I asked you for. Do I know her.She is oddly
www.nybooks.com
August 4, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reading lately:
August 3, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Rob's right: this is a sharp and thoughtful book. I'm excited to talk with Ben about it when he visits Point Reyes on August 9. ptreyesbooks.com/event/2025-0...
July 15, 2025 at 6:14 PM
July 14, 2025 at 11:45 PM
"The libertarian withdrawal from democratic life is often imagined as a quest for freedom. In fact, it is a search for its opposite — control — which at the societal scale is tyranny."
Private Worlds
Today's billionaires and technofascists threaten to rob the American people of things we are supposed to hold in common.
placesjournal.org
July 2, 2025 at 2:04 AM
Reposted by Stephen Sparks
🚨 There’s a lot of horrific news out of Washington right now—but you might have missed this: Senate Republicans just introduced a plan to sell off 120 million acres of our public lands.

Let me break down what’s in the bill and why it’s a full-scale land grab. 🧵
June 16, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Hard to fathom how someone can so blithely make a statement like this when children are left crying on sidewalks as their parents are sent to prisons.
June 5, 2025 at 9:58 PM
I was told that the selection of AI books at @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social "skewed toward the skeptical," and uh, yes that's correct.
June 2, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Note to self: do not underestimate the practice of quietly doing the work.
May 28, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Every time I watch a Tesla turn without signaling, I mutter quietly to myself, "Fascist."
May 21, 2025 at 10:14 PM
A small good thing: fresh bouquets of local flowers on the counter at our bookshop.
The counter comes alive in the spring.
May 9, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Stephen Sparks
Each time you ask an AI chatbot a question, it sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly scarce resource: water.

A 🧵on our investigation into how the data centers that power AI are increasingly being built in highly water-stressed places:

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
The AI Boom Is Draining Water From the Areas That Need It Most
A Bloomberg News analysis finds that roughly two thirds of new data centers built or in development in the US since 2022 are in places with high levels of water stress.
www.bloomberg.com
May 8, 2025 at 3:59 PM