News-The Big Read

Coolidge Wall Participates in the Big Read

In 2005, a group of fifteen lawyers, secretaries, paralegals, and our IT Director formed the Cool Book Club. We agreed to read and discuss two books a year during a lunch-time meeting. The formation of the book club was inspired by the adoption of the Dayton Community to join the “Big Read.” This is a successful national program that urges everyone in a community to read and discuss a thought provoking book.

On March 14, 2011, our Cool Book Club discussed the current Big Read selection: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. The book represents ten years of research and writing by Rebecca Skloot into the “HeLa” cells taken from a poor Southern descendant of slaves while she was being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950’s. More than 60 years later, these HeLa cells continue to live in great abundance throughout the world. The rest of the story describes how the author enmeshed herself into the lives of the Lacks family to portray Henrietta as a person and to recognize the family as part of Henrietta’s legacy.

In October of 2011, the Cool Book Club will discuss Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson.

The Cool Book Club has two book discussions a year, discussing in the spring the Big Read book for that year, and in the fall a book selected by the club. Past Big Read selections have included Nickel & Dimed, The Glass Castle, To Kill a Mockingbird, Funni in Farsi, Nineteen Minutes, and Dreamers of the Day. Past fall selections have included Random Family, In the Shadow of the Law, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Lost City Radio, The Book Thief, and A Lucky Child.

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