To Fly | Steve McCurry
Photographer Steve McCurry catches people reading around the globe
Monday
August Book Club Choice
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is our August 2012 book choice.
Here is what NY Times Sunday Book Review writer Lisa Margonelli had to say about this book in Feb 2010-
"In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot introduces us to the “real live woman,” the children who survived her, and the interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother’s continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about “the facts.” Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vow1ePzuqo
Here is what NY Times Sunday Book Review writer Lisa Margonelli had to say about this book in Feb 2010-
"In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot introduces us to the “real live woman,” the children who survived her, and the interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother’s continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about “the facts.” Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful. 
Skloot traces the family’s emotional ordeal, the changing ethics and law around tissue collections, and the inadvertently careless journalists and researchers who violated the family’s privacy by publishing everything from Henrietta’s medical records to the family’s genetic information. She tacks between the perspective of the scientists and the family evenly and fairly..."
Lisa Margonelli is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of “Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank.”
Video link with the author:
Sunday
July Book Club Meeting
The July Book Club Meeting was held at newest member, Michele's festively artistic abode complete with hen house and young chicks.
There was an incredible assortment of mountain/country and Italian foods plus a Freeport Cake in celebration of Miss Rory's birthday day. Much laughter as we dinned outside, talking about the book characters and planning our next few reads.
June/July Book Club choice
Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani was our June/July summer reading choice.
For a little insight here is the 2000 Publishers Weekly Book Review -
"Trigiani's story of a middle-aged spinster finding love and a sense of self in a small Virginia coal town is a lot like a cold soda on a hot summer day: light and refreshing, if just a little too sweet. Trigiani, a playwright, filmmaker and former writer for The Cosby Show, has a Southern voice that perfectly embodies her main character, the embattled Ave Maria Mulligan. Ave Maria, who's satisfied if not exactly happy in her role as the town pharmacist, begins questioning her quiet, country life after a posthumous letter from her mother reveals a jarring secret. Ave Maria soon faces a crisis of identity, the advances of a surprising suitor and the threat of her acerbic, money-grubbing Aunt Alice. From the suitor, who points out his brand-new pickup truck during a marriage proposal, to the town temptress, who dispenses romantic advice from her bookmobile, Trigiani brings the story alive with her flexible vocal inventions. Fans of true love stories and happy endings certainly won't be disappointed. "
For a little insight here is the 2000 Publishers Weekly Book Review -
May Book Club Brunch on a June day
The May book club meeting was held on the first Sunday of June at Jane's colorful family cottage, and in attendance was honorary Southern Belle Mary Helen Kennedy.
Yummy food and spirited conversation flowed freely as the guests dinned in the most informal garden setting. The Southern Gothic novel takes place in Florida and Beth brought gator jerky and Judy brought a gator head and some Mississippi Mud to sip (if you dare).
May Book Club Choice
Our May Book choice was "Swamplandia!" by Karen Russell. The meeting will be an early June brunch.
Here is what the NY Times reviewer Emma Donoghue had to say about this book-
"In 2006, Zoetrope published a story by a 24-year-old writer, Karen Russell. That story, “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” featured a lusciously strange setting (an alligator theme park in the Everglades) and a tough young heroine with a dead mother and an absent father, as well as a weird problem: how to save her resented-yet-beloved older sister from eloping with a ghost. A few months later, Russell’s first story collection, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” with “Ava Wrestles the Alligator” leading a crazy procession of nine other Florida swampland stories, won her wide acclaim, and last year she was chosen one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” top fiction writers.
Now her fans can sink their teeth into her first novel, “Swamplandia!,” a sort of expansion of and sequel to that alligator story. Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride: Russell has style in spades.
Interesting to note this reviewer is the author of a previous Beehive book-Room
Here is what the NY Times reviewer Emma Donoghue had to say about this book-
"In 2006, Zoetrope published a story by a 24-year-old writer, Karen Russell. That story, “Ava Wrestles the Alligator,” featured a lusciously strange setting (an alligator theme park in the Everglades) and a tough young heroine with a dead mother and an absent father, as well as a weird problem: how to save her resented-yet-beloved older sister from eloping with a ghost. A few months later, Russell’s first story collection, “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves,” with “Ava Wrestles the Alligator” leading a crazy procession of nine other Florida swampland stories, won her wide acclaim, and last year she was chosen one of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” top fiction writers.
Now her fans can sink their teeth into her first novel, “Swamplandia!,” a sort of expansion of and sequel to that alligator story. Vividly worded, exuberant in characterization, the novel is a wild ride: Russell has style in spades.
The setting and the sisters (Ava and Osceola, a k a Ossie) are the same, but they now benefit from a full back story. It’s easier to care about the pleasures and miseries of life in a failing gator park when we know how the father (the self-proclaimed Chief Bigtree) and his family ended up there, and are led to understand what goes into the routine of putting on death-defying shows every day. If Russell’s style is a North American take on magical realism, then her commitment to life’s nitty-gritties anchors the magic; we are more inclined to suspend disbelief at the moments that verge on the paranormal because she has turned “Swamplandia!” into a credible world.
Ava is a highly appealing narrator who has many talents beyond swimming with gators or taping their jaws shut. If protagonists (especially of first novels) typically bewail the mundanity of their small towns, the exotic is normal to Ava. Her first-person narration is not a transcription of a 13-year-old voice, but an evocation, in adult language, of a barely adolescent mind-set. This allows for a dazzling level of linguistic invention. Here Russell as Ava describes the dozen houses on pilings that make up the abandoned outpost of Stiltsville: “dawn light screaming through the doorways that hung on their hinges, the broken windows that birds could fly through, the plank lace, the cheesed metals.” "
Interesting to note this reviewer is the author of a previous Beehive book-Room
April 2012 Book Club Meeting
Betsy hosted the April meeting in her Sunset magazine like back garden.
We celebrated spring, the great book and Beth's birthday with a Beehive cake.
It was a most pleasant spring evening made even more lovely with wonderful friends, great discussions and many yummy foods and treats.
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