Reading about California

Here are some recommendations for California:

McTeague by Frank Norris

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle.

Isn't writer Amy Tan based in San Francisco? I haven't read any of her works, but I thought they were set in the city.

Sideways by Rex Pickett about California wine country.

Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City sequence leap to mind for San Francisco.
(That didn't touchstone properly first time; editing to add the rest of the books: More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You.)

Run River by Joan Didion

For some lighter reading, the Joe Grey mystery series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy is a good fantasy read (talking cats). The first book in the series is Cat on the Edge.

Sister Noon by Karen Joy Fowler (shortlisted for the Pen/Faulkner

Also, I believe Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune is also historical fiction and set in San Francisco.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

California:

Christopher Pike

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

California: Sue Grafton

Locked Rooms: a Mary Russell novel by Laurie R. King takes place in San Francisco and includes a detailed and fascinating description of the earthquake and fire.

(Sorry - touchstone went to wrong book)

Conquistador by S.M. Stirling takes place in California in the year 2009...as an alternate California that was never settled by Europeans.

* The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy is a beautiful work evocative of San Francisco & the Exploratorium
* The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk also has a lot of interesting visions about california -- and offers a good example of how san franciscans think of los angelenos

actually there's a good history about the water issue -- also made into a documentary, and some smart thematic publisher sold both the book & the video bundled together with "Chinatown" ... what the heck was that book? ... searching: oh yes -- Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. Essential reading.

For nonfiction - City of Quartz a history of how Los Angeles got to be so crazy.

Here are a bunch of fiction and nonfiction options for California...

http://avidreader25.blogspot.com/2012/02/reading-states-california.html