If I Stay - and - Where She Went by Gayle Forman ✔✔✔

I put these two books together, because the second one is a sequel. These are young adult books, and both were highly recommended in blogs that I read. I was intrigued by these books, first because the story is about a young classical cellist, Mia, and her boyfriend, Adam Wilde, who is a star in a rock band, and also because in the opening pages, Mia's family suffers a terrible tragedy, which Mia alone survives. The first novel is told from Mia's perspective, and the second one from Adam's, so it's interesting to see how events unfolded from one another's vantage point. These were easy reads for me, but entertaining enough.

I guess it must be bcause I now have a Kindle, but in the past month or so, I've been reading several books at the same time - my last three entries here have all been read at the same time, and I have three others on the go right now. I read whatever I feel like at any particular time. The fact that they're all non-fiction makes it more possible to do this, and actually as I'm writing this, I just received a book I won on Book Browse - My Reading Life by Pat Conroy, so I'm going to sit right down now and start it, so I guess I'm up to four at a time!

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis✔✔✔

I purchased this book because I had heard about it on Canada Reads 2011, and it actually won the title as "the most essential book of the decade", beating out The Birth House, which was my first choice. Now I'm considering recommending it for Book Club next year, not because it's the best book I've read this year, but because it covers a topic we've never had - politics, and Canadian politics at that. The subject is quite interesting right now since the Conservatives have a majority for the first time in years, the NDP have all these rookie MPs from Quebec, and Jack Layton wants to restore order and dignity to the house. In another year we'll see how things are doing, and it might be fun to discuss them from the vantage point of this novel, where the candidate does not want to run, but when he is elected, finds his political soul in doing what is right, not what will win him more votes next time.

The other interesting thing about this novel is that the author first offered the entire novel as a free podcast online in the hopes that someone would hear it and consider publishing it. The author's webpage has the complete podcast.

This book was my recommendation for Book Club next year, and was accepted by the group. We'll do it in October.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot ✔✔✔

I copied this from Book Browse:

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.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

This is our next selection for Book Club, and I will be presenting it. I think this is the third time I've read it - and each time I find something new. Olive is quite a person, and I guess what draws me to this novel, which is presented in thirteen short stories, is that I see myself, and many other women, in her. And Crosby, Maine is a small town, just like my own town, so I see many resemblances. Should be an interesting discussion!
I first posted on this book in May, 2009.