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!!!

October's Book

I know its a bit early but when the chill in the air from the air conditioning in the office starts to bite...you can't help but wonder what its like in a place that has actual climate change feels like. Once you start to go down that path its easy to slip into the semi day dream state of Autumn. The emo kid on the corner makes you think of Halloween, the dancing chicken outside of the car dealership reminds you of Thanksgiving and the crazy homeless lady in the colorful outfit helps you to reminisce about the changing of leaves... **sigh**.

In honor of the change that takes place this time of year and one of the VBC's favorite holidays....(which lets face it, we use any occasion to celebrate)Halloween, this months book is full of mystery and suspense!

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

As a child, Kathy-–now thirty-one years old–-lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.



And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed-–even comforted-–by their isolation....






The book has been made into a movie starting the ever so flawless Keira Knightley Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. Keep your eyes on Carey Mulligan however! She's poised to take over the IT girl label pretty soon. You can also see her in the new Wall Street flick!