November's book - A Vintage Affair

A Vintage Affair
by Isabel Wolff

A treasured child’s coat becomes a thread of hope connecting two very different women. Her friends are stunned when Phoebe Swift abruptly leaves a plum job at the prestigious Sotheby’s auction house to open her own vintage clothing shop in London—but to Phoebe, it’s the fulfillment of a dream. In the sunlight-flooded interior of Village Vintage, surrounded by Yves Saint Laurent silk scarves, Vivienne Westwood bustle skirts, cupcake dresses, and satin gowns, Phoebe hopes to make her store the hot new place to shop, even as she deals with two ardent suitors, her increasingly difficult mother, and a secret from her past that casts a shadow over her new venture.For Phoebe, each vintage garment carries its own precious history. Digging for finds in attics and wardrobes, Phoebe is rewarded whenever she finds something truly unique, for she knows that when you buy a piece of vintage clothing, you’re not just buying fabric and thread—you’re buying a piece of someone’s past. But one particular article of clothing will soon unexpectedly change her life. Thérèse Bell, an elderly Frenchwoman, has an impressive clothing collection. But among the array of smart suits and couture gowns, Phoebe finds a child’s sky-blue coat—an item with which Bell is stubbornly reluctant to part. As the two women become friends, Phoebe will learn the tale of that little blue coat. And she will discover an astonishing connection between herself and Thérèse Bell—one that will help her heal the pain of her own past and allow her to love again.

Octobers Book - Ghost Story

Ghost Story -
By Peter Straub

In life, not every sin goes unpunished.
For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past — and get away with murder.

This was a second choice as the one we really wanted was only in hardback. Instead of being smart girls and realizing that we could check to see if the library had a copy, we picked this one. I mean, any book that had Stephen King terrified is one we want to read!
hmmm....I think the majority of us ended up just being confused. The absolute best thing about this months book? We brought back the 'who ever picks the book, makes a treat'. And lucky for us, Jessica picked the book!! Which meant that she made some yummy oatmeal cinnamon cookies.

We talked for a few minutes about the book and then digressed into chit chat about life....

Book club isn't always about books. Sometimes, it's just about us.

September - How to Love an American Man

How to Love an American Man
By: Kristine Gasbarre

Kristine Gasbarre made a New York career of dating driven, inaccessible men. When she realizes her love life will never result in happiness if she continues on the same path, she makes a big decision—relocating to Italy to discover her roots and find out what defines her adoring grandpa. But upon receiving the news of his sudden passing, she is lured away.
With nowhere left to go, Krissy returns to her small hometown for the first time in a decade to help care for her grandmother—a refined, private matriarch suf?fering from early dementia along with the loss of her husband. In her reluctant agreement to share the nearly lost love stories and transformative lessons from her rich sixty-year marriage, Krissy’s grandma becomes the one of?fering comfort as she coaches her granddaughter through the fear of loving. Grandma’s unapologetic femininity and secret giving spirit opens Krissy’s eyes about relationships, teaching her the single most important requisite for loving a man: first a woman has to learn the power of her own inner beauty.


Many of our recent books have been simply cotten. For fun and sport. We didnt think that we would get some really deep insight and espically after last months book, we really werent looking. I had found this book on a review of a website. It looked good and it sounded like a beatutiful story of how a woman reconnects with her roots. I didnt realize how much discussion it would bring up! From how we all felt about marriage to how we felt about friends, this book changed many viewpoints. I know for me personally, I felt a connection with the material. It helped me realize that my life isnt just a search for a partner but a scavenger hunt to help devlope me as an indviudal. The grandmother in the book made each one of us want to sit down and have a chat with her. the single book clubers left book club this time realizing that we are doing the right thing while waiting for Mr.Right to show up...just being us.

August - New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance

By Elna Baker

It's lonely being a Mormon in New York City. Every year, Elna Baker attends the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. This year, her Queen Bee costume (which involves a funnel stinger stuck to her butt) isn't attracting the attention she'd anticipated. So once again, Elna finds herself alone, standing at the punch bowl, stocking up on Oreos, a virgin in a room full of thirty-year-old virgins doing the Funky Chicken. But loneliness is nothing compared to what Elna feels when she loses eighty pounds, finds herself suddenly beautiful...and in love with an atheist.

UGH!! I feel as if I can speak for the group as a whole when I say that this book was irritating as they come. Well, ok...maybe not totally irritation. There were some good parts. The whole story is about a girl who is looking for herself. Like many of us in our young adult life, she is trying to find the balance between how she was raised, the beliefs that had been instilled in her, the influences of the world around her and the experiences that she had. All of these factors come into play as she tries to figure out who she is and how she wants to be that person. Sounds great, right?

The whole book you spend rooting for her. You want her figure out who she is. Somehow if she can do that, then there's hope for you! Cut to the end, the place where it's all supposed to come together...you hold your breath hoping that there's some great resolution and some words of wisdom...

Nada...nothing....zilch...

Your left holding the bag, wondering how that happened.

July - Ghost Girl

Ghostgirl

By Tonya Hurley

Now I lay me down to sleep,I pray the Lord my soul to keep.And if I should die before I awake,I pray the popular attend my wake.

Charlotte Usher feels practically invisible at school, and then one day she really is invisible. Even worse: she's dead. And all because she choked on a gummy bear. But being dead doesn't stop Charlotte from wanting to be popular; it just makes her more creative about achieving her goal. If you thought high school was a matter of life or death, wait till you see just how true that is.

The heat of summer made the majority of us crave something cooler. And whats cooler than Halloween?! In preparation for that lovely time, we all decided that we would read a scary book.

Little did we realize that some YA fiction is YA fiction for a reason....

Once we started reading we realized pretty quickly that this was one of the those books that are better in the hands of those that grasp Justin Bieber posters. Oh well! A quick easy read for a heated summer.

June's Book - Sounds Like Crazy

Here we all are!! Our lovely Mrs. Becky gave birth to our newest VBC member who made her debut for the first time at book club!

Though she doesn't remember the trauma that caused it, Holly Miller has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Her personality has fractured into five different identities, together known as The Committee. And as much as they make Holly's life hell, she can't live without them.
Then one of those identities, the flirtatious, southern Betty Jane, lands Holly a voiceover job. Betty Jane wants nothing more than to be in the spotlight. The rest of The Committee wants Betty Jane to shut up. Holly's therapist wants to get to the bottom of her broken psyche. And Holly? She's just along for the ride...

May's Book - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Wow wow wow!! If you read on book this year....read this one! This is an amazing true story.

VBC loved loved loved it!!

Side note.... we also loved the 50% coupon that I got from CPK. That's right we all ordered din din, drinks and dessert at 50% off! What up now!?! Yay!!

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother's cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance?

April's book

I know, I slacked on posting. Its like, there's only one post a month and I can't manage to make it??

Anyway, here is April's book.

Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also dreaming of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

March's Book

The Lincoln Lawyer

By Michael Connelly

Oh Matthew Mcconaughey....**sigh** even when you were found playing the bongo drums stoned out of your mind, I still had love for you in my heart. And while I enjoyed your forays into the world of Rom-Coms, your recent return to the courtroom world have ignited my love for you and your tough guy do right in the end ways.

This is why we picked this book for VBC this month.

The Lincoln Lawyer follows Mickey Haller, a criminal defense attorney who consistently is living in the shadow of his deceased criminal defense hot shot father, who he didn't really even know. He works out of one of four Lincoln Town Cars and runs all over Los Angeles looking for his next case. He's smooth, he's smart and he has two really fascinating ex wives and one adorable daughter. Mickey's greatest fear is that he will not be able to recognize an innocent client.

I really don't want to ruin this one for you. This is a pretty good book. I know I've been running behind so we've already had the meeting and all. The writing is good but the overall feeling was that the dialog with the characters is where the writing really shines. The book is a wonderful examination of one man's internal struggle to change who he is and confront what he believes.

We are going to go see the film once everything settles down in life. A bunch of us are all in transition.

PS..... here is a little something for your eye pleasure.

February's Book

Express Male

By Elizabeth Beverly

Yep!! In February the VBC read their first romance novel. I'm not going to try and fool you all...we were actually looking forward to some steamy pages. I have say .... we were pretty disappointed.

The premise of the book is that this shy piano teacher named Marnie gets confused for a super spy of this secret organization called OPUS. This organization reads more like a cross between Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons. Our sweet innocent heroine gets caught up in between good guy Noah and bad guy Adrian. We were hoping for some hot scenes filled with adjectives for neither regions and some sexy moments that would make us blush. We were sadly mistaken.

In one hopeful section, there was a moment when Noah was hiding in Marnie's spare bedroom while they set a trap for bad Adrian, we truly thought that there would be at least some passionate kissing that would leave a little breathless. Marnie has put on her best clothes and after several glasses of wine to fortify her nerves (because she's never ever been in such a dangerous situation...**sigh**) she traipses into the spare bedroom intent in FINALLY making a move on our 007 hero. As she wonders in and we wait with baited breath for some action, we are rewarded with the handsome tough rough agent Noah ....playing Pokemon. Instead of getting it on, Marnie tells him how to play better. Awesome.

Overall I think next February when we read a romance novel, we will choose one where a bodice is actually being ripped on the cover. Maybe we'll actually get some action.

PS... bad guy Aidan was the sexist thing in this book.

January's Book

The first book of the year is one about a group of women who do a cookie exchange! We decided to an actual cookie exchange at this month's club! Pictures of goodies to come soon!

Christmas Cookie Club by Ann Perlman
Mark your calendar. It's the Christmas Cookie Club! Every year on the first Monday of December, Marnie and her twelve closest girlfriends gather in the evening with batches of beautifully wrapped homemade cookies. Everyone brings a dish, a bottle of wine and their stories. This year, the stories are especially important. Marnie's oldest daughter has a risky pregnancy. Will she find out tonight how that story might end? Jeannie's father is having an affair with her best friend. Who else knew about the betrayal, and how can that be forgiven or forgotten, even among old friends such as these? Rosie's husband doesn't want children, and she has to decide whether that's a deal breaker for the marriage. Taylor's life is in financial freefall. Each woman, each friend has a story to tell, and they are all interwoven, just as their lives are. On this evening, at least, they can feel as a group the impulses of sisterly love and conflict, the passion and hopefulness of a new romance, the betrayal and disillusionment some relationships bring, the joys and fears of motherhood, the agony of losing a child and above all, the love they have for one another. As Marnie says, the Christmas Cookie Club, if it's anything, is a reminder of delight. The Christmas Cookie Club is about the paths Marnie and her friends have taken, the absolute joy they take in life. Ultimately, The Christmas Cookie Club is every woman's story. Celebrating courage and joy in spite of hard times and honoring the importance of women's friendships and the embracing bonds of community, you'll see yourself and some of the ingredients of your own story.


This is a link to the books website that's chock full of cookie recipes!
http://www.christmascookieclub.com/

Happy New Year!!

Its been a great year at the VBC! We've read some great books and we've had some great discussions! This year, we're going to be much more motivated to post on our blog...promise.



Look forward to a members spotlight that we'll be doing on each of our members. We'll also be posting more pictures from our meetings so you can feel like your there! Its going to be an exciting year and we look forward to sharing it with you!!


WELCOME 2011!!!