My take on Judi Picoult.

Let me start this by saying I am a HUGE book fan! I love reading! I am perfectly comfortable with spending my free time, getting snug on a couch, reading a nice long book and maybe a chocolate to go with it! So, these past 2 months, when I was FINALLY done with my exams and had a sprawling 60-day long holiday in front of me, I decided to take up an author that I had heard of but never got around to reading:  Jodi Picoult.

                                                                                                     

I started off with a book of hers whose movie had topped the box office list: My Sister’s Keeper. At once, I noticed that the topic Picoult chooses are not something you’ll find in many books. What is it like to be born into a family in a constant battle against cancer? How do you cope? How do you hope? Me, having read books from authors like J.K Rowling and Stephanie Meyer to Judith McNaught and Dan Brown, these new forays into situations uncommon, but in no way rare, were new and exciting!

 The same goes for her next book that I also took up to reading: Nineteen minutes. A book revolving around the idea of 'bullying'. Sure this concept is not something very dire over here in Pakistan but in west, bullying is probably the biggest challenge school-going kids have to face! For them, it isn’t something that you just ‘get over’ as you grow up. It’s a lifelong fight, one that can only stop if measures are taken to put a stop to it! Time and again, we see the failure of the educational system to eradicate this problem from the society, examples being the 2007 Virginia tech shooting and Columbine High school massacre. This book forces you to contemplate all that can go wrong if this issue is not taken up seriously. It compels you to play your part in doing something about it.

In essence, what I got from reading novels by Jodi Picoult is that she chooses to talk about things that need to be talked about. She picks up issues and, in a very unbiased and engaging way, highlights all their pros and cons. Picoult’s manner of not telling the story as just a 3^rd person , but make all the different characters narrate the fable themselves, give us a wide range of views to work on. Because of that, instead of getting to see only one side of the main focus, all the outlooks are highlighted!

So, basically, what I am trying to say here is that for all the avid book-readers out there, if you haven’t yet had the chance of reading any of Jodi Picoult’s work yet, it is high time that you go to the book store and get yourself a copy, because this is one author that you definitely shouldn’t miss out on!

Cheers =)