Jodi Picoult Book Signing

December 9, 2008

In spring of 2006 while I was at a conference in Baltimore, MD my colleague wanted to go out to dinner with her daughter who’d been living in the area at the time. She invited us to go along, and the conversation was amicable. Eventually it circled around to our reason for being there (Education conference) and the daughter brought up a new book that was just released about school shootings called Nineteen Minutes. As an educator, this fascinated me since I am in the classroom all day every day, and I was just preparing my journey into the classroom when Columbine struck. I returned home a day or so later and went to Barnes & Nobles.

As soon as I got home I started reading. The first page grabbed me, and then I turned to page 2. Each section of the book has dates and this one said March 6, 2006. My blood ran cold as I realized that was today. This day. I continued to read and within a few days, finished the book, and I was hooked by Jodi Picoult.

Over the course of the last two years I’ve read over a dozen of her books, and my mother, sister and I pass them around the country so we can all enjoy them. I’ve read her books in Central Europe and I bought Keeping Faith in a small bookseller in Vienna, Austria.

Nineteen Minutes is still my favorite, but some of the others I really enjoyed included Plain Truth, Salem Falls, Tenth Circle, (obviously) My Sister’s Keeper, and Keeping Faith. My less favorite was The Pact, but maybe it was because the relationship failed and I hated (really hated) the girl’s mother by the end.

When my friend and colleague, Erica, told me Picoult would be speaking in Phoenix I was excited to attend, so the two of us trudged downtown last week. In hand I had a copy of every Picoult book that was on my shelf and not traveling around the country (including my own copy of Nineteen Minutes), and I convinced Erica to buy Nineteen Minutes at the signing. When I got there I kicked myself for not bring my laptop to liveblog the event, but I did have my camera. I shot probably three dozen photos over the 90 minutes she spoke.

The discussion was about separating the fact from the fiction in her writing and how she spends more time researching that writing, and how she enjoys learning new things. She was animated and funny, told stories, and kept our attention. She then had a Q&A, but she said she would come down off the stage and beat anyone who gave away the end of her books. Most of the questions were pretty good except the idiot who asked her how much money she made. She announced that Hollywood had changed the end of My Sister’s Keeper for the film coming out next summer and that Jesse, the brother in that book, would come back and appear in later novels. After several minutes, the librarian announced the book signing.

From where I sat I was able to get close in line with my four novels. I told her I taught English and had blogged about Nineteen Minutes. I told her it was my second favorite book of all time. She asked what my favorite was and I said Girlfriend in a Coma by Coupland. She responded “Well, I can’t really compete with Coupland. Can I?” I also told her my former student teacher’s cousins were taught kindergarten by her mother, and that was kind of fun. I thanked her, and we left.

Posted in literature