The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This story needed to be told, and Rebecca Skloot was absolutely up to the task. Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer decades ago, but her cells, taken without her knowledge or permission, have lived on in laboratories around the world ever since. Researchers have shot them into space and blown them up with nuclear bombs. Their production and sale has made millions of dollars, and caused billions of dollars in damage by contaminating other cell culture. Henrietta's family had no idea her cells lived on after her death - and Skloot expertly delves into the consequences of their finding out and the ethical issues that all human cell research presents.

I'm still donating my body to science, though. I'm definitely not getting into space any other way.

4 dividing cells out of 5 (so, 8 cells out of 10).

Hell House

Hey, let's go spend the week at this place called Hell House. Sure, it's called Hell House, but it's a really nice mansion and this old guy will pay us some money if we stay there for a week. Don't let the name Hell House freak you out! Haha, yeah the windows are all bricked up, that's weird. I think the last people who lived in HELL HOUSE were kind of eccentric. What's that? Murders? Insanity?

Oh yeah, maybe that happened...

...Hey, look how much air I can get jumping on these great feather beds! At HELL HOUSE! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

3 groping disembodied hands out of 5.

Naamah's Kiss

Jacqueline Carey writes sexy books about sexy people. Sometimes these people sleep with everyone but it's ok because they're part of a sexy religion and they have sexy gods. It's a big sex-positive party up in here. And there's a dragon in this one! This book is fun. It's about a girl whose bear god (not one of the sexy gods, unless you're into bears) sends her on a quest to find her destiny!!! that takes her all around the world. This is one of those books that has a map at the beginning. It's basically a map of our world, but everything has a different name (Britain = Alba, China = Chi'in...etc). Does that makes this an alternate history? Or alternate geography? Maybe the author just didn't want to draw a new map. I'm cool with it.

3 heaving bosoms out of 5.