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The Portola Valley Women’s Book Club is keeping local residents’ minds sharp through intellectual conversations about literature. Since 2017, the club has read over 90 books and has amassed about 60 members.
What do residents love about this club? They actually talk about the book, said club members. Sometimes other book clubs often turn into gossip sessions and in some cases the organizers don’t even read the book.
Town residents Rita Comes, Wen Gong and Ginger Creevy, who is no longer with the book club, formed the group when they met at the Portola Valley’s Women’s Club in 2016. Comes and Gong are both book lovers and wanted to create a space where other readers could come together to have meaningful discussions about literature.
The book club meets in the Portola Valley Library one afternoon a month.
“We wanted to be in this environment so that it’s surrounded by books, and we are constantly reminded that this is our focus,” said Gong.
Every six months, members vote on what six books they will be reading for the months to come. Book club members said joining the club has exposed them to books they typically wouldn’t pick on their own.
The book club’s discussion format is modeled after St. John’s College’s “Great Books” curriculum, which Comes took as a summer course about 17 years ago. The school’s teaching style is conversational and encourages students to learn by participating in respectful discussions. Comes was inspired.
Comes describes Portola Valley’s book club philosophy as “an opportunity for all voices to be heard and all opinions to be respected.”
The formation of the club has allowed all of its members to find a community and build connections through books, said Comes and Gong. Although the club is focused on keeping conversations within the bounds of the story, members slowly get to know each other as they share personal experiences in relation to the themes of the book.
After each book club meeting, a summary of the discussion is posted on the Portola Valley Women’s Book Club website for members that are unable to attend the afternoon meetings. Recently, the club has started organizing group activities and field trips in addition to its monthly gathering.
In January, the club read “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt, a novel about a friendship between a widowed aquarium janitor and a giant Pacific octopus. Prior to the book club meeting, members met at Comes’s home to watch “My Octopus Teacher,” a documentary about an interspecies bond between a filmmaker and an octopus. During the monthly meeting on Jan. 30, organizers also talked about planning a road trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium to see an octopus up close.
“We have decided that we want to make it as intellectual as possible, but also have fun,” said Gong. To mix up the meeting location, the club will sometimes meet at Hidden Villa, a local restaurant or at someone’s home, she added.
Despite the name, the club is inclusive to all readers, regardless of gender. It currently has one male member and welcomes more to join.
Portola Valley is home to a community of diverse backgrounds, including CEOs, researchers, company founders and tech executives. Comes said that when people begin to know you for your money or title, it can be difficult to have a regular conversation, but at book club everyone is merely known for their love of literature.
“[People] want to figure out how you can donate or what you can do for them,” said Comes. “Here in this room, everybody was just talking about the book and sharing parts of their lives, and that, at times, is a mini vacation from the other stuff and allows you to just be yourself.”
Gong added that it’s refreshing to hear the opinions of people from different backgrounds because “people can read into stories differently.” Discussing the book is what adds richness to the reading experience, she said.
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