Featuring Legos and Leis

Bumpy Landings is the debut novel of the brother of a friend. For more information, visit Donald J. Carey's website. For a contest - which involves chocolate - to promote Bumpy Landings, check out this post.

Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

Published in 2009. 477 pages.


Just over two years ago, I read my first Jodi Picoult novel, My Sister's Keeper. Since then I've read twelve others - there are just three still on my to-read list - and I was eager to read her latest novel, Handle with Care. Here's the book trailer:

Handle with Care has all the things I love about Picoult's work: thought-provoking, even controversial topics, alternating points of view, and the use of symbolism. (The symbolism in this case primarily comes through the discussion of various aspects of baking - such as folding, tempering, and weeping - as ten recipes are inserted throughout the book.)

Unfortunately, Handle with Care just didn't quite do it for me. I was distracted by the way that each character told his or her story to the daughter Willow. While I understand that the technique is intended to put me, as the reader, in Willow's place (as "you"), I often found it to result in awkward constructions or revelations. This novel also reminded me a lot of My Sister's Keeper, so in some ways I felt like "been there, done that." I am not unhappy that I spent most of my "free time" this week reading Handle with Care, but this one won't be near the top of my Picoult favorites list.

Picoult's website has book club discussion questions (be forewarned, though, because there are lots of spoilers!) as well as information about Osteogenesis Imperfecta.

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Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

Published in 2008. 447 pages.


Change of Heart is Jodi Picoult's fifteenth novel. Of the fifteen, I've read eleven to date, and Picoult has become one of my favorite authors. Here is the book trailer:

Change of Heart has all the things I love about Picoult's work: thought-provoking topics, alternating points of view, and the use of symbolism. Coincidentally, the Picoult novel I read most recently before this one was Keeping Faith, which also dealt with religion, and one of the primary characters from Keeping Faith is featured in Change of Heart.

Picoult has written an interesting "story behind the story" for her website. That same webpage also has book club discussion questions and references for more information about both the death penalty and the Gnostic Gospels.

There are several interesting epigraphs for sections of the book. And, given my name, I just have to share the epigraph for the whole book:

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. One can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had as much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age I did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

Here is a favorite quote from the book:

Finding God's grace wasn't like locating missing keys or the forgotten name of a 1940s pinup girl - it was more of a feeling: the sun breaking through an overcast morning, the softest bed sinking under your weight. And, of course, you couldn't find God's grace unless you admitted you were lost.

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