Knitted Breast Cancer Awareness "Ribbons"

I am always looking for small projects to carry with me, something quick and easy to make. When it's something meaningful or something I can give as a gift, all the better.

Every October we see more and more pink to raise awareness of breast cancer. I love this easy and new way to show your support.


All you need is yarn, double pointed needles, matching thread, and pin backings. Buttons are optional, but I liked the detail they added. I chose this yarn because it has a very pretty sheen to it. It's thicker than finger weight, but not quite sport weight.

I-cords are very easy and quick to knit and, as I play around with them, I'm finding more and more uses for them. I didn't measure the length I just knitted until I folded it into a ribbon shape and liked the size.

For the "ribbon" on the left, I used size 3 needles and for the one on the right I used a size 4 needle. For both, I casted-on 4 stitches. These are very easy to customize, using different thicknesses of yarn, different sized needles and number of stitches. They can be any size you like, play around with them.



When the I-cord is the length you like, fold it into a ribbon shape and sew it in place. I sewed it in place while sewing on the button and pin backing. And there, in less than an hour, you have a pretty, new way to show your support to an important cause!

Another wonderful thing about these knitted "ribbons" is that you can make them for any meaning just by changing the color of the yarn:
Yellow = Support Our Troops
Red = AIDS Awareness
Purple = Domestic Violence Awareness
Orange = MS Awareness

So the next time you're looking for a quick, easy, meaningful project, pick up some double pointed needles and make a knitted "ribbon".

Now For Something Completely Different: Jasper Fforde, Part 1

(Author's Note: It has been a while since my last post and that is because I decided to do a post on my favorite author, Jasper Fforde. I thought I could fit it all into one post, but as I was working on this, I discovered that I couldn't stop. When it comes to Jasper Fforde, I could talk for hours and write for pages. So I decided to spilt the post into different parts, the future segments will be about The Nursery Crime Division and Shades of Grey.)


So without further ado, here is Part One:
Thursday Next.

Anyone who has spoken to me for more than five minutes about books (or anything, for that matter) knows I am a huge fan of Jasper Fforde. I hate to use the word "obsessed" because of the negative connotation (naming my new Ford Focus "Jasper the Ford" does not constitute an obsession), but, yeah, I'm obsessed with his work. However, before you judge me, I dare you to read his books and not get drawn in to his totally unique, clever, funny, creative world. Jasper Fforde brings us something completely new in his writings and he does it with characters we all know and amazing new characters he creates.

There was a period of time in my teens when I read, non-stop, five to seven books at a time and it was at some point in those years that Jane Eyre was swept up in my cyclone of reading activity. I don't remember when I first read it but I know I've loved it for years. I have seen every movie version and even the Broadway musical.
Yes, there was a short-lived Broadway musical based on the novel, Jane Eyre, and it was amazing. It was more faithful to the book than any movie version I've ever seen. A coworker of mine is a big fan of Broadway shows and he and I bonded over this particular show, the big difference between us being that he isn't a reader and still has not read the book.

I remember, very clearly, the day he came up to the control room with a photocopied piece of paper. He had found a blurb in Entertainment Weekly about a book called The Eyre Affair and thought I would be interested.

My interest was piqued. On one hand, it sounded like something new and different and it paid homage to one of my favorite novels. On the other hand, you don't mess with Jane Eyre. Like I said, I've seen every movie version and I could tell you what was right and what was wrong with each one. You just don't screw around with such incredible, beloved characters.

But I had to give it a shot.

How do you explain The Eyre Affair? I've gotten at least six people to read this book based solely on my enthusiasm for it because there is no simple way to describe the plot, the characters, or the series that follows.

The Eyre Affair is the first in a series starring Thursday Next. It takes place in an alternate 1985 where the Crimean War is still going on after a century and people take their love of literature VERY seriously. Thursday is a Literary Detective (aka LiteraTec), a bureaucratic officer who polices the very literate world in which she lives. When she was a young child, Thursday visited the museum dedicated to the Brontes and, while reading a page of the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, she found herself transported into the actual story. This was where she first met Edward Rochester.

When The Eyre Affair begins, Thursday is living in London investigating the theft of the original manuscript of Charles Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. She is one of few people who can identify the suspect, Acheron Hades, an evil genius. Thursday comes close to capturing him, but is shot, her life saved when the bullet is stopped by a copy of Jane Eyre she has on her. While in the hospital, Thursday is saved when her future self visits her and tells her she needs to go home to Swindon and take on a LiteraTec job.

Swindon is where her mother, Wednesday, lives as well as her Uncle Mycroft and Aunt Polly, her brother Joffy, and her former fiance, Landen Parke-Laine. Where is Thursday's father? It's not a question of where so much as a question of when. Her father, Colonel Next, is a former ChronoGuard agent who had gone rogue and keeps a step ahead of his pursuers by jumping through time.

Mycroft is an inventor, some useful items, some not so much. His wife, Polly, is his biggest supporter and his assistant. When Thursday returns home, he shows her his newest invention, The Prose Portal, which allows people to enter books.

Hades kidnaps Mycroft and Polly and holds them hostage in order to blackmail the literary world with the Prose Portal. When used on an original manuscript, the Prose Portal can wreck havoc on a book. Hades uses the Portal to have one of his henchmen enter Martin Chuzzlewit and kidnap and kill a minor character. At first no one notices, the character of Mr. Quaverly was barely mentioned. When his loss is brought to Thursday's attention, the reality of what can happen when the Portal is in the wrong hands becomes very apparent.

Teaming up with Jack Schitt, an operative with the Goliath Corporation, Thursday tracks Hades to Wales after he steals the original manuscript for Jane Eyre. Thursday has to follow Hades into the book, where he has gone to kidnap Jane. With the help of Edward Rochester, Thursday hunts down Hades.

I don't want to tell you what happens next because I want you to read this book. I could write page after page about what happens and still barely touch on the story and the characters. The relationship between Thursday and Landen Parke-Laine, what happened to them, how they met while serving in the Crimean War. Her brother, Anton, who died in the war. Her father, who appears several times in the book to speak with his daughter.

I didn't even get to mention the Will-Speak machines that deliver monologues from Shakespeare via coin operated machines set up on the street, the door-to-door Baconians who try and convert people into believing it was Francis Bacon and not William Shakespeare who wrote all the Bard's work, the audience participation performances of Richard III, or Spike, the SpecOps officer in charge of vampires and werewolves. And then there's the return of the dodo (the pet of choice) and Neanderthals (the cheap labor of choice).

All of that is in one book, The Eyre Affair.






Which is then followed by Lost In A Good Book,


The Well of Lost Plots,

Something Rotten,


and First Among Sequels.



These books follow Thursday as she tries to have her husband brought back to life after his existence is erased and her work in Jurisfiction (the policing agency within literature). She begins with an apprenticeship with Miss Havisham (yes, the one from Great Expectations) to learn the ways of the book world and how to read herself into, or out of, any book or situation.

We learn how characters spend their time when they're not in a scene being read or how characters are created from generics. The Cheshire Cat is the librarian of the The Great Library, which holds every book ever written, both finished and unfinished, which includes the Well of Lost Plots, a place which holds unfinished and unpublished works. It is there where Thursday hides from various people while awaiting the birth of her child from a husband who, at the moment, doesn't exist.

Fforde's books are filled to overflowing with incredible stories, sub plots, and twists. The wordplay is everywhere, in the names of characters and what they do, to the point where you find yourself looking for hidden meaning where there is none. His characters are realistic, flawed, and believable. Thursday is independent without being over the top, she's smart but not a know-it-all, she's strong and intelligent, but flawed and relatable. She is someone you'd like to know and talk books with.

You're never quite sure what is going to happen next and you can't put any of these books down until you know. They're all written with a clever humor that never fails to disappoint. One of my favorite moments in the books is while Thursday is living in the book world, it is discovered there is a shortage of the letter "u". To make up for this, it is decided that certain words will drop the vowel, ie: "neighbour" becomes "neighbor", and this is explained away as a "local spelling idiosyncrasy". I am also a fan of the "footnoterphone", the way people communicate in books through footnotes.

Reading the Thursday Next books will take everything you've ever known, or thought you've known, about books and the world of literature and turn it on it's head. All the while, you'll be cheering for this intelligent, independent lead character.

One thing that has stuck out to me is the absolute villany of the bad guys Fforde creates. They are some of the most creative villians you can imagine. In The First Among Sequels, when I read what Aornis Hades did, I actually gasped out loud. I've read a lot of books in my time, but this had to have been the most evil, vile thing someone can do to a person.

As for Mr. Fforde himself, I've had the honor of meeting him twice.


When you really admire someone for their talent, it can change how you feel when you meet them. After meeting Jasper Fforde, my admiration of him only grew. I've gone to two book signings where he gave a talk before the signing. He is as clever and witty as his books, but even better than that, is the fact that he is an incredibly nice guy. He patiently answered every question a person asked while signing, he posed for the above picture while his partner played with my camera (for some reason she really liked my 35mm Canon Rebel SLR). It's really a wonderful feeling to learn someone you admire so much is really a good person.

I feel like I can go on for days, just about the Thursday Next books, but I need to move on. There is just too much to cover in one blog posting. I would have to create a blog solely dedicated to the Thursday Next books to even begin to touch on all they include. So, I'll tell you what I tell everyone about these books:

"Just trust me, read them, you won't regret it."

A "Gone With The Wind" Christmas Tree Skirt

My cousin, Lori, loves Gone With The Wind. She quotes the movie, has posters on the wall, and every year she buys the new GWTW ornament that Hallmark comes out with. Her Christmas tree is a 6 foot tall tribute to her favorite movie.

Last year Quilting Treasures came out with a line of GWTW fabric. I knew I had to make something for her, but what? I got on this website of sewing patterns, it's where I go when I need inspiration for a new craft. Every pattern maker I've ever heard of, and some I haven't, are on this site. It was here I found this pattern and decided to make her a Christmas Tree Skirt.

The company kept pushing back the release date of the fabric, I originally wanted to make it a Christmas present for her. The fabric was pushed back from Decemember to January. When it was finally released, I started looking around, going to my normal fabric shops, and coming up empty. One store had had it in stock, but it sold out immediately. I found that to be a common problem. As with most specialty fabrics, they are often difficult to find and pretty expensive, especially when ordered online.

I finally found three different online stores with the different fabrics I needed to make the tree skirt. I ordered a couple yards here, a couple yards there, until I had what I needed.

Originally, the tree skirt pattern called for two fabrics for the pie piece shaped sections on the front of the skirt and another for the back. But with all the beautiful GWTW fabric available, I had to do more than that. There are 8 pieces on the front, so I bought 4 coordinating fabrics for the front and back.

My apartment is very small and the biggest problem I have is finding enough room to spread out the fabric to cut it and then piece it together properly. This makes it much more difficult to make large projects than it should be.

I have a large cardboard measuring/cutting board that I laid out on my queen sized bed to piece together the pieces for the front.


When I went looking for the trim, I knew I wanted something that complimented the fabric, but I didn't want anything glittery or tacky. I absolutely loved this one! It is a solid brown, a velvet ribbon with thin brown cord woven around it in a pretty design.

I needed 11 1/4 yards for the tree skirt. They didn't have that much on the big "cut-to-sell" spool, but they did have six individual spools of 4 feet of trim. I ended up buying those six spools and then getting another 5 yards off the big spool and it was just enough.

This trim was more difficult to work with than I imagined. The cords would fray quickly when cut, so I had to act fast and sew the edges before they had a chance to fray.


This is the back to of the skirt. I loved this fabric and thought it would work best to compliment all the other fabrics.

And here is the finished product.

It is huge! I am really happy with how it turned out.

And, even more importantly, Lori loved it!

Trader Joe's & Peanut Butter Cup Brownies

I love Trader Joe's.

Unfortunately, the closest one is an hour and a half away. So my visits to TJ's tend to be far and few between.

If you've never heard of or visited a Trader Joe's, it's a small grocery store that sells, mostly, private label food. Their food is very good, unbelievably affordable, and the service is great. I've visited several in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Illinois and every one of them has been clean and well stocked and the customer service has been terrific.

How affordable is this store? I am obsessed with perfecting French macarons (I haven't yet) and one of the ingredients is almond flour. Since I don't own, or have room for, the large food processor needed to grind the almonds properly, I have to buy it already ground. At my local grocery store, I found a one pound bag of almond flour for $10, at Trader Joe's the same pound is only $3. And just because the store is more affordable doesn't mean the quality of the food goes down. It is the complete opposite. I can't think of one thing that I've ever bought there that I didn't enjoy.

Last month I visited my brother and his family, they live about three blocks from a Trader Joe's and shop there often. My sister-in-law brought out a plastic container of Trader Joe's mini peanut butter cups and told me they were even better than Reese's. Being a lover of all things peanut butter and having spent most of my life living 15 minutes from Hershey, where Reese's are made, I scoffed. There is no way they could be better than Reese's peanut butter cups. I still refuse to admit it, but they are melt-in-your-mouth, creamy bites of awesomeness.

Whenever I try a new sweet, the first thing I try to come up with is a way to bake them into something. Some ideas work, some don't. These peanut butter cups are tiny.

My sister-in-law recommended cookies, like chocolate chip cookies but with the peanut butter cups instead of chips. That does sound delicious, and I probably will do that some day, but I had brownies on the brain. I didn't want to do chocolate brownies, I figured that would be overkill. So I wanted to do peanut butter brownies.

I bought the peanut butter cups and drove from Illinois to Pennsylvania with them packed in a cooler bag with a bag of ice. They made it home safely and I put them in the fridge and started my recipe search. In the end, I went with this recipe from Betty Crocker. Her recipe called for chopped up peanut butter cups and milk chocolate chips mixed in and then more peanut butter cups pressed into the top. That sounds great, but instead I used only the TJ's mini peanut butter cups with the brownie recipe.

After mixing the brownie ingredients with the stand mixer, I hand mixed most of the peanut butter cups into the batter using a large rubber spatula. I kept about a handful of peanut butter cups out (yes, these are my scientific measurements).

I sprinkled the rest of the peanut butter cups over the top of the batter.

The recipe called for the brownies to bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Believe it or not, the brownies were done to perfection in 17 minutes.

I cut a small piece to try it while they were still warm and I wasn't too impressed. They were good, but they weren't peanut butter-y enough for me. I split the pan in half and cut the brownies, taking half of them in to work with me and leaving the rest for my family to enjoy.

A while later, I tried another brownie after they completely cooled. And it was fantastic! The brownies were mildly peanut butter-y, but the peanut butter cups stayed soft and melted into your mouth when you bit into them. When rereading the recipe, I noticed they recommend you wait until the brownies are completely cooled before eating them. I guess they know what they're talking about.

I plan on getting even more of these wonderful mini peanut butter cups and experimenting. I'll make the cookies and see what else I can concoct. These versatile little candies will find their way into all sorts of new and delicious goodies.

The Lure of Young Adult Books

It is so easy to dismiss young adult books as not being worth your time. I know it has been quite a while since I was a young adult. But, like all genre of books, there are a lot of quality stories.

I love Harry Potter. I remember when the first book came out and my mother suggested I read it. I read the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone then set it down and forgot about it. A while later, a friend told me I had to give it another try, so I picked it up again. I ended up reading Sorcerer's Stone in one night and Chamber of Secrets the next. This was just before Prisoner of Azkaban was released and my father, who works in the book business, brought the advanced reader's copy home. I snatched it up the first chance I got and, again, read the book in one night. To this day, Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite of the seven books.

I turned into one of those crazy adults who was obsessed with this "children's" series. My mother was a book manager at a large store and I helped her plan and execute midnight madness parties. I own all seven books in hardcover, along with extra copies of Order of the Phoenix (one is the children's British version and the other is the adult British version, that just means they have different covers). They sit atop one of my bookshelves in a place of honor between Harry Potter bookends. Beside the books is the little cardboard trunk that holds the Harry Potter Uno game. I also have several of the books on CD, if you ever get the chance to listen to the amazing Jim Dale read these books do it! My prize piece is a special edition of the Half-Blood Prince with an autographed book plate inside, another perk of having parents in the book industry.

The Harry Potter books are an anomaly in the publishing industry. A series of books originally written for children but appealing to teens and adults as well, both male and female. With Sorcerer's Stone being published in the US in 1998 and Deathly Hallows published in 2007, quite a few children grew up with the series. But I actually know more adults than children who have read them.

A coworker of mine has a teen aged daughter and they are both avid readers. I have received more quality book recommendations from him than I can count. One that sticks out was the book East by Edith Pattou.

It's a young adult book written with a fairy tale vibe. In a small village in Norway, Rose is a North-born baby born to a poor mapmaker and his superstitious wife. It is believed North-born children are destined to break their mothers' hearts because they will leave home to travel far away. They are wild, unpredictable, and intelligent. So Rose's mother lies to her and tells her she was East-born and should be obedient. But her fate can not be denied. The story follows Rose's adventures after a great white bear comes to take her away.

East is a book I would never have picked up on my own, but I'm so glad I took this recommendation. The beginning was a bit slow, but I stuck with it and it got to the point where I could not put the book down. It was engaging and well-written, just a good, old-fashioned tale of folklore.

More recently, my cousin, who also works in the book industry (it seems as though I was always destined to be surrounded by books) told me about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. She swore up and down that this book was fantastic and it was hugely popular. I had not heard of it and it seemed a little too sci-fi for me. But she kept at it until I finally picked it up.

I am so sorry I ever doubted her. The Hunger Games is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I can't stop talking about it and I have gotten so many people to read it, I should be on Scholastic's pay roll. The second I finished The Hunger Games, I gobbled up the second book Catching Fire which had the distinction of being even better than the first book. I am counting down the days until the third and final book in the series, MockingJay, comes out.

The Hunger Games tells the story of a post-apocalyptic North America, called Panem, where the country is now divided into 12 districts, each one responsible for a certain item (ie: grain, fruit, coal), surrounding a large capitol city. At one time there had been 13 districts, but 74 years ago the districts tried to lead a rebellion against the Capitol which led to District 13 being destroyed. As a reminder to the public that they are in control, the Capitol holds the annual Hunger Games. A boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each district are chosen to fight to the death until there is only one survivor. The Hunger Games follows 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen as she is sent to the Games and has to compete.

Now, reading that description, this does not sound like the kind of book that would appeal to me. I was very pleasantly surprised. No description can fully do justice to the characters and story. At no point while reading these books did it feel as though I was reading a story aimed at 7th graders. There is a surprising amount of violence, but it doesn't take away from the story or the characters. These are quality, well-written books with characters and a plot that grabs you and holds you. You'll find yourself unable to put the book down until you've finished.

Every year my mother gives a speech at a local restaurant to teachers and librarians about current award winning YA and children's books. There are piles of books and she can't read them all, so I help her. I dig through the pile and pick out the books that sound good to me. As always, it's hit or miss. One book I picked out this year sounded like something I would love and was compared to the work of the Brontes. Uh, no. This particular book and Bronte should never be mentioned in the same sentence. It seemed confused as to where it wanted to go and then just abruptly ended. Another book was set in the west just after the Civil War and told the story of a teen aged boy and his young sister. In my opinion it was overly dramatic and the point it was trying to make, about the way the government treated the Native Americans, was tossed in near the end and was implausible and rushed.

But there are always a few that stick out. The one book that really stuck out to me this year was When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, the 2010 Newberry Award Winner.

It was a quick read and an enjoyable one. But it didn't really seem like anything special. I really liked how she ended the book, it was unexpected and unbelievable, but it worked. I returned it to my mother and told her it was a good read, but nothing really jumped out at me, I didn't understand why it won the Newberry Award.

After a few days, I knew why. I could not stop thinking about When You Reach Me. The more I thought about it, the more I really liked it. I mean really liked it. I found myself telling people about it and recommending it. There is just something about that story I can't really put my finger on that planted itself in my mind and refused to leave.

When You Reach Me tells the story of sixth grader Miranda who lives in 1970s New York City. She is obsessed with her favorite book A Wrinkle In Time and her mother is obsessed with getting on $20,000 Pyramid. There is a cast of characters including the vagrant who lives outside their building, Miranda's best friend who no longer wants to be her best friend, the new friends she discovers, and her mother's devoted boyfriend. Then one day, Miranda starts receiving mysterious notes that change the way she sees the world.

This book is full of the pre-teen drama we've all experienced and can relate to, as well as a bit of fantasy. This is book recommended for fifth to eighth graders and yet it was an enjoyable read for an adult.

Just like any genre of books, there are YA books that aren't too good, books I don't enjoy or don't want to read. But, just like any other genre, the good ones are really good.

Star Wars Cookie Experiment

About a week or so ago I discovered that Williams-Sonoma had come out with a set of Star Wars cookie cutters. There are 4 in the box: Yoda, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a Stormtrooper. I had to own it.



The set cost $19.95, a bit pricey for 4 plastic cookie cutters, but it is Williams-Sonoma and the Star Wars name does cost money.
As soon as I got them, I couldn't wait to use them. So I figured Memorial Day was as good a reason as any to make Star Wars cookies. I knew it was going to be a huge undertaking, I have never actually decorated cookies with royal icing (I'm a buttercream person) and I had only ever used it once before. So, I set aside the entire day to work on these. Six and half hours later, I'm pretty happy with the results.


The cookie cutters came with a recipe for sugar cookies and royal icing from "The Williams-Sonoma Kitchen". I decided to use their recipes and, to be honest, there is nothing too special about them. Both cookie and icing recipes were very easy to make. The dough rolled out nicely and the cookie cutters worked great! They have a spring to push down on and it presses the details into the cookie.


They baked beautifully, GBD as Alton Brown would say. I was worried about the varying thickness, stamping the details on them made sections of the cookie thinner, but that caused no problems. Yoda's ears were a bit darker than the rest of the cookie, but they weren't burned.


According to the directions, the recipe would make about 32 cookies (8 of each design) I actually got over 5 dozen cookies. Next time, I think I'm going to make them thicker.


Then I outlined and flooded the cookies in their main colors with royal icing. The icing recipe did end up very thick and it had to be thinned down quite a bit to flood the cookies and decorate. I used a plastic squeeze bottle and toothpicks to smooth the icing. One important lesson I learned is that next time I'm going to use less icing in the flooding, I ended up over filling the details and when I decorated them, I had to freehand it and that was tortureous.

I waited an hour to let the icing harden and then I got to decorating. It was tedious work, a lot of dying icing and having to clean and reclean tips and couplers. The hardest one to do was Darth Vader, he had the most details on such a small cookie. I used a #1 Tip and it still seemed too big. I also realized that Darth Vader's features are kind of cat-like. But overall, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.


And even more important than how they look, is how they taste. Now, I didn't try all of them, but I can attest to the deliciousness that is Boba Fett.

Henrietta Lacks and Her Impact: We ALL Owe Her

I don't think there is any kind of book I won't read. Fiction, non-fiction, history, humor, how-to...if the topic interests me, I'll read it.
A couple of months ago, I was scanning through new releases on Amazon.com to see what was coming out when a title caught my attention. My paternal grandmother was adopted as a toddler, her birth name had been Henrietta Lester, so when I saw the title of the book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" it caught my attention. Like most people, I had never heard of Henrietta Lacks and the impact she has had on all of our lives. After reading the summary of the book, I found it hard to believe it could be true and I wanted to read the whole story. I am so glad that I did.



Henrietta Lacks was a 31 year old mother of five when she died a horrific death from an aggressive form of cervical cancer. A sample of her tumor was removed and sent to a lab without her knowledge or consent, which was common practice at the time. For the first time in medical history, human cells continued to live and grow in the lab after being removed from the body, they were "immortal". These cells became known as the HeLa cells, the name taken from the first two letters of her first and last names. The cells were sold to doctors and labs all over the world and were used in the creation of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine and every medical breakthrough since 1951. Drugs that treat AIDS and cancer were discovered using Henrietta's cells, or rather the cells that grew from the original sample taken from her. Her cells were sent into space for testing, they were used in researching gene mapping, and every other significant scientific research done in the past 59 years. It is almost overwhelming to think of all that has been achieved and discovered because of this one woman.

But there is so much more to Henrietta Lacks than just her cells. She was a devoted mother of five children, one of whom was born while the cancer was growing inside her. She is remembered very fondly by her extended family and friends as a caring woman who looked out for them, fed them, and always left the door open. She loved to dance and laugh.

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot is an important story to tell and a book everyone should read. There is not a person alive today who doesn't owe Henrietta a debt of thanks and yet her story was a barely mentioned footnote in scientific history. Her cells were taken and her family didn't know until almost 20 years later when researchers started calling to ask about her. Millions of dollars were made off the sale of Henrietta's cells and her family never saw a dime. They struggled to survive in a poor community.

And yet they did survive.

Rebecca Skloot's book tells the story of Henrietta's cells and their lasting effects on science and medicine, but it also tells the story of Henrietta and her family. While I found the science aspects fascinating, I enjoyed the stories of her family even more. It wasn't always pretty, there was abuse, death, anger, jail time, murder, teenage pregnancy, and mental illness. Henrietta's oldest daughter, Elsie, had mental problems and ended up at a hospital where, many years after she died, the Lacks family learned she had endured horrific experiments and abuse. After Henrietta's death, her 3 youngest children were sent to live with her sister who mistreated them. Luckily, her oldest son, Lawrence married Bobette Cooper after his stint in the military. Bobbette demanded they take in Lawrence's siblings and raise them, which ended up being the best thing to happen to those children. She offered the support and strength those children needed. Bobbette believed in education and made sure Deborah, Henrietta's younger daughter, finished school even though she became pregnant as a teenager.

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" was a labor of love for Rebecca Skloot. She spent years researching and, through persistence, was able to get in touch with Henrietta's children. Ms. Skloot worked closely with Deborah, Henrietta's surviving daughter, and was able to learn even more about her family.

I went to my first book club meeting for this book and I'm glad I did. It's really amazing to me how so many people can see one book in so many different ways.

When I read "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" I was impressed with her family's survival and strong faith.

They were poor, while their mother's cells were sold for millions. They had health problems, while their mother's cells helped treat and/or cure just about every medical problem known. For many years, the Lacks family was left in the dark about Henrietta and what her cells meant to the medical and scientific communities. There was a lot of confusion, no one had taken the time to explain just what had happened and why. Rebeeca Skloot was the first person to take that time to tell them everything, to explain what happened, to define cells and what they do and how they are used in research. Deborah wanted to learn more, so she went out and got medical books and a dictionary. I think that was my favorite part of the story. There was a lot of anger in the Lacks family, understandably. They were angry because they felt they had been misled and used, they were angry because Henrietta didn't get the recognition they believe she deserved, and I have to agree with them. Their anger was justified. But Deborah didn't sit around and give into her anger, she educated herself. She read and asked questions, she went along with the author to learn more about her sister, Elsie, and her mother.

While some people in my book club felt sorry for Deborah, I felt proud of her. She took control of what she wanted to know and I think that's wonderful. One of the women in the club actually told me that she was impressed with how I thought more about the people, the Lacks family, than I did about the money they didn't get. I was grateful that she saw that. Because this book is a story about people, it's not just about cells and money changing hands, it's about a family.

There was one gentleman in my book club who was a very proud, very left liberal. He would make broad sweeping statements that either had nothing to do with the book or that seemed to be more about pushing forth his political agenda than a discussion of the book. One of the things he brought up was if we thought the author, Rebecca Skloot, had just written this for the money and had she made a lot from this book. I told him I got the impression she wrote this book to learn more about Henrietta Lacks and to share her story with the world and I that hope she makes a ton of money. I, personally, have no problem with people who have a lot of money, good for them. I'm not jealous and I don't believe money is evil. Ms. Skloot tells in the book how she used her own money, her own credit cards to fund her research and travel costs. She spent years working on this book and because of it, she not only shared an important aspect of medical history with the world, but she also shared the story of the woman behind the cells. And I am so glad she did. The world will be a better place if more people knew about Henrietta Lacks and I wholeheartedly believe Rebecca Skloot deserves to be rewarded for bringing the whole story to the public.

I work for a local news station. Back in April of this year, we did a story on how the Penn State Hershey Medical Center had a historical marker placed on their campus to commemorate the perfecting of a technique for propagating HPV (the human papillomavirus) by Penn State College of Medicine researchers led by the late Dr. Mary K. Howett and Dr. John W. Kreider. My first thought was, This was possible because of Henrietta Lacks. Just last week, we did a story on the importance of vaccines. Again, I thought This was possible because of Henrietta Lacks.


I can't help but think that if more people had that thought when they heard of a medical breakthrough, it would mean more to the Lacks family than any amount of money.

I urge everyone I know to read this book. Whenever someone asks me to recommend a book, I suggest "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks". This is a woman everyone should know. We all owe a debt of thanks to Henrietta Lacks.