June book announced

Last night was another wonderful meeting of the book club. A huge thanks for everyone for pitching in and pulling together the meeting at mine and Dale's house. Thanks for Juli for the salad, Shannon for the bread and spinach dip, Sam and Anjanette for the pies, Stacey for the snacks and Tripp for the coffee...not to mention all the wine everyone brought.

Up next will be Life of Pi by Yann Martel at Stacey's house om May 20th.

Last night, Shannon also presented her pick for the June selection and it will be The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. After reading the jacket, I personally am very excited for this book. Here is a blurb from amazon.com:

From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile,

May's Book Announced

Stacey Luthy picked the May book and it is <>.....Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which is one of fellow book clubber Anjanette Osborne's favorite books.

Why Stacey Picked This Book:

I have talked with all different book clubs and they have recommended this book enthusiastically. Also, the summary of the book really caught my attention - an adventure at sea. 

Amazon.com Review:

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father packs up the family and their menagerie and they hitch a ride on an enormous freighter. After a harrowing shipwreck, Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, trapped on a 26-foot lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, a seasick orangutan, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker ("His head was the size and color of the lifebuoy, with teeth"). It sounds like a colorful setup, but these wild beasts don't burst into song as if co-starring in an anthropomorphized Disney feature. After much gore and infighting, Pi and Richard Parker remain the boat's sole passengers, drifting for 227 days through shark-infested waters while fighting hunger, the elements, and an overactive imagination. In rich, hallucinatory passages, Pi recounts the harrowing journey as the days blur together, elegantly cataloging the endless passage of time and his struggles to survive: "It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion."

A little Irish and a lot of conversation

Last night was another joyful meeting of the Standley Lake Book Club and it was Irish-tastic. In honor of up-coming St. Patrick’s Day, our host Tripp Baltz out did himself and provided a traditional Irish feast for our meeting that included Guinness beer, corned beef & cabbage, Irish music and even shamrock shaped sugar cookies. All I can say is wow. Everything was delicious and it was the perfect way to end the week. A huge hats off to Tripp, not to mention a great thanks!

You would think that the book was also something Irish, but it was not. It was Mountain Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It brought on some really interesting conversations about whether a man that does so much good is actually a good man. The book also brought a lot of discussion on the best way to cure the world of disease. Do you do it one person at a time like Paul Farmer, who is profiled in the book or do you try to help a larger pool of people. It was a very interesting conversation. Today, Tripp posted a quote of Facebook that I think summed up the conversation perfectly.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." – Margaret Mead

What I love about our book club is that everyone participates and feels free to give them opinions. The conversations always evolves well beyond the book to topics of politics, social norms and even religion. These are topics usually avoided, but the group seems to always be respectful of each other, so the hot topics always flow with such ease. I always leave book club feeling so happy and proud of the group.