SWE-SC Book Club

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SWE-SC Book Club: Sunday June 13th at 2 pm at the Conch Key Grille on US 1 (Just North of the Pineda Bridge in SunTree). . The Immortal Life of Henreietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Followed by: Hill Country by Janice Woods Wilder. The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows (Meetings beginning in August).

SWE-SC Book Club Selections:

The SWE-SC Book Club has selected it's next four books - enabling you to do one-stop shopping for the books for the months to come:

Our first book has a science background, but told from the effect on the families left behind. The Immortal Life of Henreietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is an amazing book covering modern medicine, bioethics, and race relations. (Info and reviews for all books follow). We will review this book on Sunday June 13th at 2 pm at the Conch Key Grille on US 1 (Just North of the Pineada Bridge in SunTree). (Note: this is a date change)

At our next meeting (date tbd) we will review Hill Country by Janice Woods Wilder. This is historical fiction about our country the perspective of a Texas Prairie Woman in the late 1870's. The author of this book is related to our own Nance Mate!

Following Hill Country, we have a best seller said to be shocking, exciting, deeply affecting, and very funny. The Other Hand by Chris Cleave is said to be truly special.

Finally, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is said to be delightful. Set in Guernsey during World War 2, it teaches about the power of love and Friendship. Dates and locations for the last three have not yet been determined.

Summaries of Selected Books:

June 13th: The Immortal Life of Henreietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks.jpg

Publisher's Summary

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 60 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 bombs 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 Henriettas 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 20 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.

What the Critics Say

"Writing with a novelist's artistry, a biologist's expertise, and the zeal of an investigative reporter, Skloot tells a truly astonishing story of racism and poverty, science and conscience, spirituality and family driven by a galvanizing inquiry into the sanctity of the body and the very nature of the life force." (Booklist)
"Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about 'faith, science, journalism, and grace.'...A rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society's most vulnerable people." (Publishers Weekly)

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Hill Country by Janice Woods Wilder.

Hill Country.jpg

From Publishers Weekly

The author of True Women uses her grandmother's unfinished autobiography to depict the resilience and gritty determination of a Texas prairie woman. In the late 1870s, when Laura Woods is seven, her mother fights off a marauding Apache party and Laura gets her first, intriguing glimpse of "white Indian" Herman Lehmann, who was kidnapped and raised in the tribe. When Laura is a teenager, she falls in love with Herman, but the affair is secret and fleeting, and Laura takes a place in society by marrying Peter Woods, the scion of a prominent family. Laura hopes that Peter will make a career in government, an ambition that she craves herself. But it is her friend Rebekah Baines Johnson who will become the wife of a congressman and mother of a president, and Laura realizes she must work behind the scenes if she is ever to put her family on the map. While raising her brood of seven children, she campaigns for Teddy Roosevelt, lobbies for the suffragette cause and seemingly touches nearly every event in Texas history. Though the dramatic events of Laura's life are more colorful than many a made-up saga, the narrative, while brisk and interesting, lacks the vitality of well-wrought fiction. Yet Laura Woods's story is a reminder that, regardless of their absence from ballots and voting booths, women played an essential part in shaping the country's history. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc

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The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

other hand.jpg

Product Description

We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterwards that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'A powerful piece of art... shocking, exciting and deeply affecting...[a] superb novel... Besides sharp, witty dialogue, an emotionally charged plot and the vivid characters' ethical struggles, THE OTHER HAND delivers a timely challenge to reinvigorate our notions of civilized decency. 'An ambitious and fearless gallop from the jungles of Africa via a shocking encounter on a Nigerian beach to the media offices of London and domesticity in leafy suburbia...Cleave immerses the reader in the worlds of his characters with an unshakable confidence. ' 'In a novel that tackles serious and uncomfortable subject matter, Cleave's writing makes one laugh and despair in equal measure. 'A better book than Chris Cleave's THE OTHER HAND may be published this year, but I wouldn't bet on it. This exquisitely written story of a Nigerian refugee and a British glossy magazine editor is the most powerful novel I've read in a long time... it's also a very funny book about brave, funny people who the reader quickly grows to love... But the heart of the book is Little Bee; naive yet insightful and sophisticated, damaged yet capable of great courage and humour, she is an unforgettable character. I finished THE OTHER HAND in tears, and I still can't get it out of my head. Just read it.' -- The Gloss

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Publisher's Summary

A New York Times number-one best seller.

It's 1946 and author Juliet Ashton can't think of what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - by chance, he's acquired a book that once belonged to her - and, spurred on by their mutual love of reading, they begin a correspondence.

When Dawsey reveals that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Juliet's curiousity is piqued, and it's not long before she begins to hear from other members.

As letters fly back and forth with stories of life in Geurnsey under the German Occupation, Juliet soon realises that the society is every bit as extraordinary as its name.

From Publishers Weekly

The letters comprising this small charming novel begin in 1946, when single, 30-something author Juliet Ashton (nom de plume Izzy Bickerstaff) writes to her publisher to say she is tired of covering the sunny side of war and its aftermath. When Guernsey farmer Dawsey Adams finds Juliet's name in a used book and invites articulate-and not-so-articulate-neighbors to write Juliet with their stories, the book's epistolary circle widens, putting Juliet back in the path of war stories. The occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident-including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation-and person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer died earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot. Juliet finds in the letters not just inspiration for her next work, but also for her life-as will readers. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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