Odds and Ends, August 2025 Edition

While our weather in the San Francisco Bay Area this summer has been delightfully mild, the month of August has felt surprisingly busy! The weekends filled up more than usual, which didn't leave me a whole lot of writing opportunities this month.

I do have more than enough to fill up another Odds and Ends post, though!

Since my last Odds and Ends post, both of my book clubs had our regular meetings.

The Tough Guy Book Club met on the first Wednesday of the month to discuss To Have and Have Not, by Ernest Hemingway. The reaction was mixed at best from the group. It's the story of a not-very-good man running contraband in the 1930s between Florida and Cuba. Full of moral compromises and few (if any?) likable characters, it's not one that any of us would recommend... although I could see it adapted into a gritty Netflix limited series.

The Tahoe Book Club met last Sunday to discuss City of Thieves, by David Benioff. My brother Mark recommended it to me, and it was a big hit with the club. It's a coming-of-age story set during the Siege of Leningrad, following two young men on an absurd quest to find a dozen eggs for a Soviet colonel's daughter's wedding cake. It's darkly comic, blending humor with unspeakable tragedy and the horrors of war from a perspective you don't usually get from World War II stories. Strong recommendation!

I pivoted from one WWII story to another, with the Tough Guy Book Club's next book up being Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada. I'm still working my way through it, so I'll withhold any judgement for now, but I'm leaning heavily towards a hearty recommendation. It's a long read, and I really wish I'd started it a little earlier in the month to ensure I'd have enough time to finish before September 3!

We picked our next two books for Tahoe Book Club, since scheduling is a little more difficult for this group over the next few months. We'll be shifting into science fiction for both of our next books – Old Man's War, by John Scalzi, and Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. The gang requested some action, as well as an older sci-fi novel to see how it anticipated more modern technology themes. Both should cover the action and adventure part, and Snow Crash specifically is from 1992 and coined the term "metaverse". Should be interesting to see how this not-exactly-ancient novel predicted our more modern capabilities with virtual reality.

In addition to our regular Tough Guy Book Club, the group also got together for a bar crawl around Jack London Square in Oakland.

I covered this in my last piece for the blog, A Story in Six Drafts and Six Bottles of Ink, but it's worth calling out again: I've started posting videos on Youtube about my fountain pen hobby!

I've published three pen-related videos so far:

• Birmingham Pen Company - Dart Frog Bundle
• Kakimori Dip Pens
• My First Nine Months of the Fountain Pen Journey

That last one is the most recent, showing just how deep down the rabbit hole I've gone in such a short time.

I've also hung out with my local pen club, the SF Pen Posse, and this coming weekend will be my first pen show, the SF Pen Show. This is one of the biggest pen shows in the US, and we're making it a family outing. Four Nassi family members will be in attendance this year – me, April, Mark, and Dad. I've filled up my show schedule with classes and seminars, and I can't wait to drool over all the cool stuff that'll be on sale.

Finally, April and I spent a gorgeous Saturday afternoon with 40,000 of our closest soccer fan friends the other day, when Bay FC held a match at Oracle Park in San Francisco. The SF Giants graciously lent their ballpark to our favorite soccer club, and the Bay Area showed up and showed out. We couldn't have asked for better weather, the atmosphere was incredible, and Bay FC nearly clawed back after being down 3-0 in the first half to the Washington Spirit. Alas, the "home" team couldn't tie it up in the final seconds, losing 3-2. I'll take the moral victory of being part of the largest women's professional sporting event ever held in the United States.

I hope you've had a good month of August so far, and I hope you have an even better September. I'm sure I'll be back with more content sometime after the Pen Show, so stay tuned to see just how much damage I do to my bank account!