How two women quietly reading books in an SF bar started an introvert revolution

Silent Book Club, otherwise known as "Introvert Happy Hour," started in San Francisco in 2012 with two friends reading together in a bar. Now, it has grown to 180 chapters across the world in 20 different countries. less Silent Book Club, otherwise known as "Introvert Happy Hour," started in San Francisco in 2012 with two friends reading together in a bar. Now, it has grown to 180 chapters across the world in 20 different ... more Photo: Photo By Kelly Hoffer / Courtesy Of Silent Book Club Photo: Photo By Kelly Hoffer / Courtesy Of Silent Book Club Image 1 of / 42 Caption Close How two women quietly reading books in an SF bar started an introvert revolution 1 / 42 Back to Gallery

Back in 2012, Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich were sipping wine at the now-closed Bistro Central Parc, a cozy French restaurant near the Panhandle in San Francisco decked out in twinkling fairy lights. They were complaining about book clubs.

“The club I was in at the time was reading a book I wasn’t interested in,” recalled de la Mare. “I had a baby at home and didn’t have much time, but there was so much pressure to finish the book so I would have something to say at the meeting.”

Nearly everyone who’s been in a book club has a bone to pick with them. Big personalities dominate the discussion. You’re expected to read a thousand-page brick in a single month. The books you pick are too literary, or not literary enough. Janice didn’t pitch in for wine and cheese.

Offhandedly, de la Mare described the drama-free book club of her dreams to her friend: one where all she had to do was meet people at a bar with whatever book she was reading. No forced deadlines. No reading books she didn’t want to read. No vacuuming the house. No preparing deviled eggs or canapés.

Gluhanich loved the idea. Why not make it a reality?

And that’s exactly how Silent Book Club started. Two friends in San Francisco, quietly reading in a bar, which led to a global phenomenon with 50,000 members online and more than 180 active chapters in 20 countries.

Their first meeting was at Wine Kitchen on Divisadero, where they sat down together, ordered drinks, and committed to reading at least one chapter before lapsing back into conversation.

It surprised them how something as unassuming as two women reading would stop people in their tracks.

“If you look around a bar or restaurant, look at how many people are staring at their phones and not talking. That’s a cultural norm,” said de la Mare. “But if you replace a screen with a book, all of a sudden it draws a lot of attention.”

Through word of mouth, more friends found out about Silent Book Club and asked to join. In 2015, one friend moved across the country to Brooklyn and started her own chapter there.

The two groups began bicoastal meetups using Instagram hashtags to connect, which sparked the idea to form an online community that could spread Silent Book Club’s geographical reach even farther. They launched a website as well as a Facebook group, and new chapters kept popping up steadily for years.

“Social media and word of mouth were the primary drivers of new chapters until 2019, when we were featured in Oprah Magazine and NPR and there was a global explosion of new chapters,” explained de la Mare.

The format of a Silent Book Club meeting is simple: The group picks a time and a place, and everyone brings a book to read of their choosing. For the first half hour, people order drinks, share what they’re reading and get settled. Then, it’s an hour of uninterrupted quiet reading time.

After the hour is up, people are invited to start chatting again — or, keep reading if they so choose. Informally, they call it “Introvert Happy Hour.”

“It provides a space for people who want to get out of the house and spend some time with friendly-minded people, but don’t want to go through that whole awkward small talk,” said de la Mare. “You have a book in your hand, so it’s really easy to talk about what you’re reading. And when you get to that moment of not having anything else to say, it’s totally socially acceptable to go back to reading.”

Having recently started a book club myself, I wondered what the secret to a long-lasting gathering of bookish acquaintances was. According to de la Mare, it’s flexibility and inclusivity. Oh, and wine doesn’t hurt.

“This is the easiest book club you can be a member of,” she said.

QSF&F, another book club in San Francisco, has survived many more years than your average book club due to another strategy: recruiting members with a shared, very specific taste in books. This queer science fiction and fantasy club, which originally started as one young gay man’s ploy to find a boyfriend with similar interests, has been meeting at Borderlands Books for 20 years now.

“People sometimes don’t want to attend because it’s dorky or nerdy. We simply do not care. We embrace it wholeheartedly,” said John Goldie, one of the leaders of QSF&F.

To him, the key to a successful book club is picking as narrow of a theme as possible that still has a big enough pool of books to choose from. They also stay relatively drama-free by bonding over their unapologetic obsession with sci-fi.

In Silent Book Club’s case, you don’t have to share the same taste as your neighbor, but you can still participate in that same feeling of community that a book club offers.

“Whenever we start reading, there’s a moment of awkwardness — you feel like, ‘Am I doing it right? And then people sort of just settle into it,” said de la Mare. “It’s almost this inaudible hum. People will just get into their books, and this peacefulness settles.”

The San Francisco chapter of Silent Book Club meets the last Sunday of every month at 4 p.m. at The Bindery, 1727 Haight St., San Francisco.

QSF&F meets the second Sunday of every month at 5 p.m. at Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia St., San Francisco.

Madeline Wells is an SFGATE associate digital reporter. Email: madeline.wells@sfgate.com | Twitter: @madwells22