The Blackout Reading List
Books for when the lights go out
Hi everyone,
I hope you’ve all emerged from the “Great San Francisco Blackout of 2025” with your sanity (and hopefully most of your refrigerator contents) intact.
If you were anything like me this weekend, you spent Saturday night huddled under a blanket, watching your phone battery tick down, and realizing just how quiet this city gets when the hum of the refrigerator stops, and you don’t know what to do... maybe read?
It was a strange, frustrating, and oddly clarifying 48 hours. We live in the tech capital of the universe, yet this weekend, our “Smart City” looked pretty dumb. We watched autonomous Waymo cars blinking helplessly at dark intersections, paralyzed by politeness because they didn’t know whose turn it was. We saw the “cashless economy” evaporate, forcing cafes to revert to a “Zelle me later” honor system.
It turns out, being a reader is a surprisingly effective survival skill. When the power cut out, we didn’t have to scramble for something to do. We just lit a candle (or turned on a Kindle) and settled in.
Books That Explain the Blackout
Since we just lived through a major infrastructure failure, I couldn’t help but think about books that explain why this keeps happening. Consider this our optional “extra credit” reading list for when the lights are definitely on:
1. California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric by Katherine Blunt
If you want to know why this keeps happening...
⚡ Vibe: Investigative Thriller
📝 What it’s about: I am currently reading this one, and it hits hard. If you felt a specific kind of rage toward PG&E this weekend, this book validates it. Blunt, a Wall Street Journal reporter, does a deep dive into the corporate history of the utility we love to hate. It reads like a true-crime story where the victim is... well, us. It explains how decades of neglect and prioritizing profits over safety led to the wildfires and grid failures we see today. It’s infuriating, but essential if you want to understand the wires above your head.
2. The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke
If you want the big picture on how our energy actually works...
⚡ Vibe: Pop-Science / History
📝 What it’s about: Why is our power system so weird? This book explains how the US grid was built (haphazardly, over a century ago) and why it struggles so much with modern life. It breaks down the “largest machine in the world” in a way that makes you realize it’s basically held together by duct tape and hope. This one is on my reading list. It helps explain why adding solar panels and EVs is so complicated, and will make you sound very smart at dinner parties when the lights flicker.
3. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
If you need a reminder that we will survive...
⚡ Vibe: Hopeful Dystopia
📝 What it’s about: I haven’t actually read the book yet, but I watched the HBO series and loved it. This story follows a traveling symphony and theater troupe in a world where the grid (and everything else) has collapsed. Their motto is “Survival is Insufficient.” It’s a beautiful reminder that even when the systems fail, art, stories, and community are what sustain us.
See you at the next meeting!