Jodi Picoult

This past Wednesday I was lucky enough to attend a book signing/q&A at Princeton University with Jodi Picoult. Picoult happens to be a Princeton grad, and the gathering was quite small and intimate. She read from her upcoming novel, Change of Heart, which sounds like another best-seller. It is about a man on death-row who wishes to donate his heart to a little girl of his victim. Typical of Picoult, the novel has a lot of intriguing characters who each have their own voice and individual issues. I'm anxious to read this book which comes out next March.

Hearing that her novel My Sister's Keeper was becoming a movie and would be starring Carmeron Diaz as the mother, a student there was appalled at this casting choice and asked Picoult how such a decision could me made. Picoult's reply was intriguing: she said that she's not so opposed to the "Hollywood" approach to her book, because she hopes that it will turn that many more people onto the story. She explained that many people have come up to her who said they enjoyed the TV movies from her books so much, that they then decided that they would read the book. She basically said that this could turn non-readers into readers, much like I hope our movie promotion of books will do throughout this school year.