Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin were two sisters famous/infamous in American social and political circles starting in the 1870s. While most would think of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony when it comes to women’s rights, suffrage and reform, these sisters were renowned orators whose lifestyle fascinated and irritated the general public, especially men in power. They were from the wrong social class and espoused scandalous (for the time) views on sex, women, the poor and wealth. And they were linked to one […]
Who wants to live forever?
In 1951 Henrietta Lacks died from aggressive cervical cancer. She left behind a husband and four young children. She also left behind a sample of cancerous tissue that did what very little other human tissue had ever done before, it lived. Her tissue survived and reproduced, providing a unlimited source of human cells for experimentation. You can imagine the breadth of research possibilities that became possible when this cell line – called HeLa – originated at Johns Hopkins. But the Lacks family couldn’t. They were […]
It’s a Relative
This book had been on my To Read list for a while based solely on the title; it’s a sweet and sentimental memoir but wasn’t enough to entice me to read the other books Wade Rouse has written. Rouse jumps in-between his childhood and his present day as he recounts his favorite memories related to each month. It’s a cute concept even though the timeline gets a little hard to follow. He manages to get two or three stories per month by including stories from […]
This lady is CRAZY.
I feel so behind for CBR6. Oh well. This just means I’ll have to read a ton of YA and historical romances this summer over vacations to catch up. My book club’s March selection was Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and lately all I’ve had time to read were the book club assignments. The subtitle, From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, pretty much sums up this memoir perfectly. At the ripe old age of 26, after a spate of really terrible life changes, Strayed […]
Just Like Riding a Bike
While visiting my sister this past weekend, we spent 90 minutes waiting for a table for a late lunch (that we never got – long story). The restaurant is part of a giant building that also has a coffee shop, an Anthropologie-esque objects area (perfumes and such), as well as a funky book store, where I found this gem. I’ve been contemplating buying a bicycle and, despite the name (ugh, “girls”), was interested enough in the content and the visual presentation to pick it up. […]
Super!
Target: Tim Leong’s Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe Profile: Comics!, Non-fiction? Super Graphic is an aggregation of information. A sequence of colorful graphs, diagrams and charts that serve up a dizzying variety of information about comic books, the worlds they contain and the industry that produces them. It isn’t so much a book to be read cover to cover as it is an adventure, every page turn revealing something new and delightful. That is, if you’re a comic book nerd. Which is […]