‘Less doomscrolling, more doom-reading’: West Seattle’s Morbidly Curious Book Club about to celebrate 2 years
By Torin Record-Sand
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
This Thursday will mark the two-year anniversary of one of West Seattle’s thriving book clubs, the Morbidly Curious Book Club.
The club revolves around non-fiction books centered on dark and taboo topics, with common themes involving death, true crime, occultic or alternative spiritual practices, and the limits of the human body. This month’s book exemplifies these themes: On Thursday, they will be discussing “Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery“ by Ira Rutkow. We sat down with the founder of the club, West Seattle resident Perla X. Caballero, to talk about her and the club as they look toward the anniversary.
First, about the founding of the club: It is actually a chapter of a national book club started in 2021 by a woman named Patricia, intended as a digital-only book club. Caballero said she found out about it from this initial digital push: “The algorithm found me,” she said, “’Hey, you like this kinda stuff!’ it said.” (Caballero is also an avid fan of horror and noir detective fiction, and participates in other Seattle area groups dedicated to those books.) “Patricia wanted to make it more global, put the call out to ‘hey, if anybody wants to start your chapter, first come first serve,’ I noticed Bellingham and Tacoma had a chapter, and I messaged her ‘Hey, is West Seattle available?’ and she said yes.”
Growth during the past two years has been significant. “Only eight people attended my first meeting, which was at Beveridge Place.” she said. (She gave a shout-out to the owners, Gary Sink and Terri Griffith, who she said are “like uncles” for the support they gave to her in her early days.) Average attendance now is between 15 and 22 people each month, and the group’s online page has more than 260 people signed up.
From that growth, Perla shared that the club has come to represent people across all walks of life from West Seattle. “Anyone from senior citizens to someone who’s like a young twenty-something has come to our book club.” she said. She noted that her one of her most recent attendees is actually a mom, who is there representing her daughter of around fourteen who is unfortunately too young to come to most of the 21-and-over locations the club tends to meet at. Though, of course, many of the members do reflect some of the content of the books themselves: “A lot of members that are with us are nurses, and we also have ambulance drivers, a forensic anthropologist, and a phlebotomist among them.”
We also asked her about her initial interest in the dark subject material of the book club. “What got me into dark non-fiction was probably based around what I grew up around. I grew up in California in the Bay Area in the mid-’80s. I moved to Portland first, and they caught the Green River Killer two months after I got there. My mom called me and said I needed to move back home because Ted Bundy was there, and when you’re in murderland, you get curious.” she said. Part of her interest is also motivated by her ongoing background in legal work. “I’m a trained paralegal, and I’ve worked in places such as the Public Defender’s Office. People do terrible things to each other, and are constantly putting each other in harm’s way. That gave me a tough skin.”
She also shared that part of it was her proximity to a “Christian cult” in her childhood. (Books about cults, she said, feature as some of the most popular readings for the club.) “I grew up in a Christian cult; my mom converted when I was very young, and I spent a lot of time recruiting people. I learned about the dark side of community – which is that they will do whatever it takes to get their way in breaking your free will – so maybe that’s why I’m into this.” she said.
On the more positive side, one of the things that motivated her most was simply reading as an act against the overwhelming digital influence in her life, negativity from world events, and the loss of focus that entailed. “When the [national] book club started, it was during the pandemic, I couldn’t read because of what was going on – so this was a month where I had time to read a book, I’d read a book.” She said it was the first in a long time, and she gradually worked her way up: she read ten books in 2024, 28 in 2025, and this year her total is at least 50. “My goal is just – I love doing the meetings, if it’s 4 people to 25 people, I am happy to see people take time out of their day to talk about the books. A lot of friendships have been formed by the book club.”
Her mantra to encourage people to come to the club summarized this theme succinctly: “Less doomscrolling, more doom-reading!” (This theme continues even in the graphics and other social media for the club online, which she does mostly by hand, alone. “I grew up in the Sarah Connor era,” she said. “Computers are bad, and I don’t believe in AI..”)
For the future, Perla says she’s just happy to continue as long as there’s direction from the national organization. “I didn’t see myself surviving two years, by month three I didn’t know what I was gonna do – I really just hope people pick up a book.” she said. “Tomorrow, Patricia could shut down a book club, and the national chapter goes and so we could we – so hopefully, we just have another year of reading.”
This month’s meeting (and 2nd-anniversary celebration) will be taking place at 7 pm Thursday (September 24) Jet City Labs/Revelry Room (4547 California SW)on Thursday, September 24th. As mentioned above, the book will be ‘Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery’ by Ira Rutkow. (You can also see past and upcoming book selections on the Morbidly Curious Book Club main website here.
If you’re interested in getting the book locally, Caballero mentioned that she has partnered with both Paper Boat Booksellers (WSB sponsor) and Pegasus Books to have copies of the books available for the club. And, as always, she offered that she is always available to reach out to if you’re interested in the material, particularly if you might have a hard time dealing with it: “Know what your comfort zone is, and if you hit a fence or don’t want to open that door, just message me and I’ll let you know how it ends. I’m the one that has to have the weird nightmares at night.”
