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?