Are you a person 18 years-of-age and up who loves graphic novels? Want to meet up with other readers and discuss great comic book literature? Then join the Santa Clara City Library’s Graphic Novel Book Club for the 2025 season! We will enjoy celebrated comic creators, award winning titles, and a wide range of genres from around the world. Just bring your enthusiasm, curiosity, and an open mind!

The Graphic Novel Book Club meets every second Thursday of the month at 5PM at the Central Park Library's Board Room and also on Zoom.

To RSVP for the Zoom use this link: tinyurl.com/scclgnbookclub

Books can be found on the Santa Clara City Library online catalog (sclibrary.bibliocommons.com), through LINK+ (https://www.sclibrary.org/services/other-services/link), or as an ebook through Hoopla (https://www.sclibrary.org/books-more/digital-library). The selected titles for each month should be completed before each meeting. Reading ahead is encouraged!

About July's read:

From Brian McDonald, an expert on the narrative arts, comes a remarkable non-fiction graphic novel about the art of storytelling.

"There is wisdom in the land of the dead, for it is the place that all stories lay to rest. And what is a story, if not a simulation of survival?

Wielding his massive experience from film, tv, comics, and more, Brian McDonald lays out a history of storytelling and shows the reader how the best tales tug at our truest biological instinct: the need to survive. Readers will see how different forms of survival―physical, emotional, spiritual―inform the arc of character development in a way that makes them more complex and compelling. And how plot and circumstance must then force your protagonist to meet their worst nightmare. Toby Cypress’s electric art guides the reader through the underworld, visualizing each narrative masterpiece, and bringing the ideas to life.

Whether you’re in film, books, comics, or simply a story enthusiast, this book offers a way to see character development and the crafting of plot through the lens of human questions of morality and mortality."

GRAPHIC NOVEL BOOK CLUB 2025 SCHEDULE

JANUARY: It’s Not What You Thought It Would Be by Lizzy Stewart

FEBRUARY: Knock Out: The True Story of Emile Griffith by Reinhard Kleist

MARCH: Artificial by Amy Kurzweil

APRIL: The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt by Ken Krimstein

MAY: Rare Flavours by Ram V

JUNE: So Long Sad Love by Mirion Malle

JULY: Land of the Dead by Brian McDonald

AUGUST: Where the Body Was by Ed Brubaker

SEPTEMBER: Impossible People by Julia Wertz

OCTOBER: The Road by Cormac McCarthy & Manu Larcenet

NOVEMBER: Polar Vortex by Denise Dorrance

DECEMBER: You and a Bike and a Road by Eleanor Davis