Hear ye! Hear ye!

It was decided today that December’s Non-fiction book for discussion will be Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (click here for Amazon’s description), a work that spent more than a year on the New York Times best sellers list.  If you haven’t read it already, you can easily find it in the WAGGIN system in a variety of formats – regular print, large print, and audiobook – and it’s part of our Overdrive collection, too. The discussion group will meet on December 6th at 3pm, so you’ve got plenty of time to request your copy and prepare for the lively discussion to follow.

Curious about what we’ll talk about? Below are some of the discussion questions found on the author’s website…if you won’t be able to make it to the meeting, please feel free to share your thoughts here!

One of Henrietta’s relatives said to Skloot, “If you pretty up how people spoke and change the things they said, that’s dishonest” (page xiii). Throughout, Skloot is true to the dialect in which people spoke to her: The Lackses speak in a heavy Southern accent, and Lengauer and Hsu speak as nonnative English speakers. What impact did the decision to maintain

speech authenticity have on the story?

As much as this book is about Henrietta Lacks, it is also about Deborah learning of the mother she barely knew, while also finding out the truth about her sister, Elsie. Imagine discovering similar information about one of your family members. How would you react? What questions would you ask?

Deborah shares her mother’s medical records with Skloot but is adamant that she not copy everything. On page 284 Deborah says, “Everybody in the world got her cells, only thing we got of our mother is just them records and her Bible.” Discuss the deeper meaning behind this statement…If you were in Deborah’s situation, how would you react to someone

wanting to look into your mother’s medical records?

As a journalist, Skloot is careful to present the encounter between the Lacks family and the world of medicine without taking sides. Since readers bring their own experiences and opinions to the text, some may feel she took the scientists’ side, while others may feel she took the family’s side.What are your feelings about this? Does your opinion fall on one side or the other, or somewhere in the middle?

Henrietta signed a consent form that said, “I hereby give consent to the staff of The Johns Hopkins Hospital to perform any operative procedures and under any anaesthetic either local or general that they may deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of: ________” (page 31). Based on this statement, do you believe TeLinde and Gey had the

right to obtain a sample from her cervix to use in their research? What information would they have had to give her for Henrietta to have given informed consent? Do you think Henrietta would have given explicit consent to have a tissue sample used in medical research if she had been given all the information? Do you always thoroughly read consent

forms before signing them?

Consider Deborah’s comment on page 276: “Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different.” Is it possible to approach history from an objective point of view? If so, how and why is this important, especially in the context of Henrietta’s story?

Did you miss the discussion of Reconstructing Amelia?

Even if you missed the book club meeting, you didn’t totally miss out on your chance to discuss the book! The below are questions about Reconstructing Amelia. Yes, there are a lot of them! Don’t let that intimidate you, though, you’re free to respond to as many – or as few – as you’d like!

1. What is Amelia’s relationship like with her mother? Why doesn’t she share more with Kate? Why are adolescents often so reluctant to talk to their parents about the events in their lives—especially problems they are having with friends?
2. Describe Amelia. Is she a typical teenager? Talk about her friendship with Sylvia. What drew the girls together? What about her relationships with Zadie and Dylan? What made her feel so close to her Internet friend, Ben?
3. Might Amelia’s situation have been different if she’d had a larger family around her? What if that family had been larger, but more filled with conflict?
4. Is Kate a good mother? She believes she knows her daughter well, but does she? What does she discover about Amelia that surprises her? What does she discover that confirms her deepest beliefs about Amelia and their relationship?
5. What kind of a support network does Kate have to rely on? Does she bear any blame for the events that occur? Is there any way she could have prevented the tragedy? What about Grace Hall—how much, if any, responsibility does the school bear for Amelia’s death? Who can you turn to for help in handling a problem involving your child?
6. Why is being popular so important in adolescence? Has the Internet and social networking added to the pressures teenagers must cope with?
7. What impact does class play in the story? What about sexuality—Amelia’s recognition of her own desires? What about Amelia’s need to be perfect—her drive to be a good student?
8. Why does such a smart girl like Amelia fall into the trap of the secret clubs? Why isn’t she more suspicious of the Magpies and the boys around them? How did her keeping the secret about the Maggies impact her relationship with Sylvia? Why are some children cruel to others? Did your school have a hierarchy or clubs like the Magpies? Where did you fit it?
9. If you have a child, how much do you know about his or her life? How far should parents go to monitor their child’s life? Do children have a right to privacy the way adults do? What might someone learn if they tried to “reconstruct” you from your emails, correspondence, texts, tweets, messages, blog posts, and Facebook updates? Does social media make us too connected? What is your opinion of social media—do you think it’s a positive development or an erosion of who we are and how we interact?
10. How does the author ratchet up the suspense in the story? What clues does she provide to point you toward the truth—or away from it?
11. Bullying is a major topic across the media and throughout society. Do you believe it is a serious issue, or do you think it’s a phase that all children go through? How has the rise of the Internet contributed to the severity of bullying and to our awareness of it? Can we decrease the incidents of bullying? How do we learn to stand up to mean people?
12. Does Kate get closure when she discovers the truth? Where do you think she will go from here?

Discussion Questions for The Poisoner’s Handbook

When it comes to the discussion questions, please keep in mind that they’re only a guide – you won’t lose points for not answering all of them, from straying from the topic, etc.  Here are a few examples relating to The Poisoner’s Handbook (the June read for the Non-fiction book club)…

1. Did the title, subtitle and cover accurately represent the book? Was the book what you expected?
2. Did you know anything about the time period before reading the book? Did you learn anything new?
3. What was the most interesting part of the book?
4. Who did you find more interesting, chief medical examiner Charles Norris or toxicologist Alexander Gettler?
5. How did you find the pace of the book? Did the author’s method of unfolding the
events make you feel you were living through the era?

We’d love to have you join us in this “virtual discussion group” – if you’ve read the book, please feel free to post a reply with your responses!

Exciting News…..

If you’ve been interested in taking part in one of our book clubs, but have been unable to attend because the time or day – or even the location – just doesn’t work for you, now you can still “play” with us! We’ll be making the book clubs available to anyone with internet access. It won’t be long before you see posts asking for suggestions for the next month’s choice and those will be followed by polls that allow you to vote. Once the selection has been made, some questions for discussion will be posted for you to reply to at your convenience.

Not sure what all of that means? Hopefully, this hypothetical time frame will help…

October 16: Suggestions for November are requested
October 16-22: Suggestions for November are accepted
October 23: Poll is posted, listing the November suggestions
October 23-29: Voting ensues
November 1: November selection is announced
November 8: Discussion questions for November’s book are posted

To see what “typical” discussion questions look like, watch this space – an example will be posted within the next couple of days!