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This is the first in a series of stories by The Six Fifty about clubs and groups around Silicon Valley to meet new people, explore hobbies and foster community.
For bibliophiles interested in sharing their enthusiasm for reading with others, book clubs can be a great way of creating community and diving deep into the written word in a friendly, yet organized, way. The Peninsula is brimming with book clubs for all kinds of readers and fans of all types of genres and topics.
While some clubs meet privately, there are plenty of others that are open to anyone. Check out a local public library or independent bookshop to find the book club of your dreams near you. Pacifica’s Sanchez Library, for example, hosts a monthly morning walk-and-talk book club that combines discussion with a nice stroll, while Feldman’s Books in Menlo Park offers a historical fiction club that includes wine and cheese.
We’ve featured a few more specialty clubs below, including a graphic novel club in Palo Alto, a novella club in Redwood City, a multi-city cookbook club and a “silent” book club in San Mateo.
Graphic novel book club, Palo Alto
Graphic novels and comic books are wildly popular with young readers, but they have plenty of grown-up fans as well, with no shortage of sophisticated works in all genres to choose from. Graphic novel lovers can find book clubs dedicated to the genre, for example, at Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park Library, where Danièle Archambault has been leading a graphic novel book club for readers 16 and up since 2015.
Archambault is a researcher, educator and graphic novelist herself. She teaches a class on the art of visual storytelling at the Palo Alto Art Center, where her students expressed an interest in going deeper into the visually engaging world of graphic novels and comic books than they had time for in class.
“I started the book club so we could read books and discuss them,” she said.
Archambault is originally from Montreal, Quebec, and has always enjoyed comic books and graphic novels. “It’s in the French culture to read those books, even for adults,” she said.
After taking a Stanford Continuing Studies course on writing graphic novels, she started creating her own, enjoying the medium as a way of documenting her observations on culture and society.
The graphic novel book club includes a variety of genres as well as fiction and nonfiction works, including biography, history and memoir. In the club’s early years, Archambault selected all the books herself, concentrating on the classics. Now, members help select entries from a long list Archambault puts together annually, usually chosen from books published within the last few years.
With so many to pick from, representing a range of interests and topics, “It’s quite a difficult process,” she noted.
At each meeting, “we go around the table, one after the other, so that everybody has a chance to speak,” she said. “Each person gives their idea, their feeling of the book, their analysis of the book, and then we have a general discussion.”
Though the club was originally made up of Archambault’s art center students, membership has since expanded. She is mindful that not everyone has a background in the medium, so the start of the year tends to include some discussion of the technical aspects of how graphic novels work.
“People tend to talk about what moves them emotionally in the content of the book. I try to make sure they discuss also the structure of the book, the style of the book,” Archambault said. In addition to the written content, “In a graphic novel book club, you have the visual aspect and that’s very important because some people have strong ideas about what’s beautiful in terms of visuals.”
Archambault facilitates a French-language graphic novel book club as well, usually held virtually. The English-language graphic novel book club in Palo Alto is generally held in person, but can pivot to online as needed.
“If it’s cold and rainy and dark and they don’t want to drive, we have (a) hybrid meeting,” she said.
February’s meeting of the Palo Alto club will be extra special this year. For the first time, several club members who are also graphic novelists and/or comic book authors – Devika Joglekar, Kyle Hurlbut and Archambault herself – will present and share their works and processes with the group.
Palo Alto Library’s graphic novel book club meets at 7 p.m. on the second Thursday of the month September through May in the Midtown Room at the Mitchell Park Library, 3700 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto.
Novella book club, Redwood City
Downtown Redwood City’s Fireside Books & More is home to numerous book clubs, including one focused on novellas. Organizer Kiera Peacock started the club because she loves sharing books, but understands well the hesitancy some feel about committing to assigned reading, especially when they also have extensive personal to-be-read piles awaiting their attention.Â
“I always wanted a book club but I was like, ‘I don’t think it’s for me. I want to read what I want to read,'” she said. Past attempts left her frustrated when she didn’t connect with a lengthy chosen book but still felt obligated to complete it. On the other hand, she craved the bookish community and enjoys discovering new reading material.
When Fireside opened in downtown Redwood City in early 2025 and started welcoming book clubs, Peacock was intrigued by the possibilities. She decided to start a club focused on novellas (shorter books, which for her purposes means 200 pages or fewer) in different genres, including sci-fi, horror and fantasy.
The books’ bite-size lengths mean members aren’t investing too much of their precious reading time, but are still offered a rich and rewarding experience, with stories they may not have otherwise picked up.
“I read a lot, and I’m always on the hunt for things I’ve never read before,” she said.
She especially revels in finding “weird little novellas” that will generate interesting conversations at meetings.
“I’ve had several times people come in (saying), ‘I’m not sure how I feel about this book,’ and then by the end they were like, ‘This discussion helps me,'” she said.
Peacock recently sent a survey to members about the books included so far.
“Every book was someone’s favorite. And that’s huge for me. That’s the point of this whole exercise – it might not be for everyone, but it’s going to be for someone, and for that person or those couple people, that’s going to be amazing,” she said.
Peacock is responsible for selecting each month’s novella, but she bases those selections on feedback she receives from members and takes their suggestions. For each meeting’s RSVP form, she includes questions about how the club could be improved or what books they might read in the future. Her surveys also help her drill down to figure out what specific elements of books members liked or disliked.
She gives further recommendations each month based on aspects of that month’s book choice as well.
The club has been running since May of last year with attendance capped at 15, and it’s been so popular some months have had a waitlist. Fireside stocks copies of the club’s selections, but purchasing them is not required for participation – sourcing library copies is fine, too.
“It was really important to me to not make this a financially dependent endeavor for people,” she said. “I don’t want there to be any barrier to entry.”
Each book club has its own structure and Peacock likes to come very prepared, creating a handout of discussion topics and questions for each book. The group may not get to all of them, she said, but as a facilitator it’s handy to have ideas to fall back on in case the conversation lulls.
“For me, and hopefully for others, you read some things and you need to talk about it,” Peacock said.
The joy of book clubs, she added, is that “you take something that’s inherently a solo endeavor and you make it a shared experience. I think people are really interested in that.”
Fireside Books & More’s novella book club meets at 6:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday of the month at 2421 Broadway, Redwood City.
Cookbook book club, Atherton, Belmont, Foster City and San Carlos
Hungry to try new recipes? The San Mateo County Libraries system offers monthly cookbook book clubs at its Atherton, Belmont, Foster City and San Carlos branches. Elena Hobbs-Minor has been a member of the club at the Atherton branch for around a year.
Each month, the librarian facilitating the club selects a cookbook, and members choose a recipe from the book to prepare at home. At the next meeting, “We discuss the recipes, how the cookbook strikes us, what appeal does it have for us, what we learned from the cookbook,” Hobbs-Minor said. Members also often share photos of their recipe endeavors.
Hobbs-Minor, who’s been in book clubs for the past several years and is now also in a library writing group, was first attracted to the cookbook book club because she planned to translate her mother’s handwritten recipe book into English and wanted to encounter a variety of cookbook styles for inspiration – in addition to updating her own home cooking repertoire.
Her mother lived in countries all over the world, each of which left some kind of influence on her family kitchen, she said. With the cookbook book club, Hobbs-Minor enjoys learning about the culinary backgrounds of her fellow members, as well as trying recipes rooted in diverse traditions.
“It’s a nice way of connecting to people through food, learning about everybody’s sort of heritage through food,” she said. Her own mother’s Russian cooking “was always with a twist from whatever country she had lived in. I think that’s partly why I like the cookbooks from different areas too, knowing how much it affects your cooking, your style; you can start changing your cooking with a different flavor from another country.”
She’s gained new favorite recipes thanks to the club, including some from books that on first glance she didn’t expect to enjoy, proving the old adage that you can’t always judge a book by its cover. “It turns out that I really loved so many of the recipes there,” she said. She’s also loved expanding her use of spices and flavor combinations.
As with book clubs in general, there is a sense of community to be found in getting together and sharing in a supportive group, regardless of one’s previous cooking experience.
“You can make it as interesting a journey as you want to make it,” she noted. “Some people are really into cooking and some aren’t, they’re just kind of learning, and that’s OK for either one. You don’t have to be perfect at cooking to try out recipes and talk about them.”
Atherton Library’s cookbook book club meets on the second Thursday of the month at 6 p.m., 2 Dinkelspiel Station Lane, Atherton. Check online for other branches’ meeting schedules.
Silent book club, San Mateo
Many book clubs draw folks who like to chat. But what if you enjoy reading in the company of others without having to stick to an assigned book or partake in a big group discussion afterward? For those types of readers, a “silent” book club may be a good fit, offering a social outlet in a quiet way.
Elspeth McKee is a librarian who organizes the silent book club at San Mateo’s downtown library branch (she also facilitates a romance book club at the Hillsdale branch.) She’s been a fan of silent book clubs for a while, attending some in Burlingame and Redwood City, and started the San Mateo club about a year ago as she noticed the concept’s popularity.
The San Mateo monthly meeting runs for two hours starting at 6 p.m. for casual chat and mingling if desired, followed by “personal quiet reading time” from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
“Bring whatever you’re reading; if you want to pick something up at the library you can,” she said. For the last half hour, attendees are welcome to keep on reading, discuss their books with others in pairs or small groups, or go home if they’ve had enough. Sometimes, a special craft is offered as well, such as making bookmarks.
This type of club can feel “less daunting,” McKee said, without any pressure or expectations about reading specific selections or having to share with a big group.
“It’s basically a good opportunity to talk to people about random books, to learn about things you might not have thought about,” she said.
With each session’s sign-up sheet, McKee also gives room for people to list recommendations, offering another way to spread the word on good books.
“I’ve found some things there and I’ve been able to pass on some of my favorites to other people, and that’s been really enjoyable,” she said.
San Mateo Library’s silent book club meets on the fourth Wednesday of the month starting at 6 p.m. at the Main Library, 55 W. Third Ave., San Mateo.
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