Jodi Picoult on the Ellen Show

Jodi Picoult talks to Ellen about Sing You Home, her latest novel, and life as a writer.

 

Authors’ Top Ten Books

I found my way to toptenbooks and was happily surprised to find that J Peder Zane, editor of The Top Ten – Writers Pick their Favourite Books, has posted the top ten favourite books of a large selection of authors.  I particularly like to see what authors are reading and which books are their favourites.  This is a good way to find new authors to read. 

For your enjoyment I have included only a small collection of authors’ favourite books – for the rest of the list go over to the toptenbooks website.  I found that some of my favourite books are on Jodi Picoult’s list; Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a book I treasure and The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffennegger is by far the most beautiful, realistic and well written love story.

 

Top Ten List for Michael Connelly

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Day of the Locusts by Nathanael West
3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
5. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
6. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
7. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
8. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
9. The Public Burning by Robert Coover
10. Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

 

Top Ten List for Alice Hoffman

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
3. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
6. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
8. The Stories of Grace Paley by Grace Paley
9. Fahrenheit 451 by Raymond Bradbury
10. Grimms’ Fairy Tales by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm

 

Top Ten List for Stephen King

1. The Golden Argosy by Van H. Cartmell & Charles Grayson, editors
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
4. McTeague by Frnk Norris
5. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
6. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
7. 1984 by George Orwell
8. The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott
9. Light in August by William Faulkner
10. Blood Merdian by Cormac McCarthy

 

Top Ten List for Joyce Carol Oates

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. Ulysses by James Joyce
3. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
4. The Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
5. The Stories of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka
6. The Red and the Black by Stendhal
7. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
8. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
9. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
10. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

 

Top Ten List for Jodi Picoult

1. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
2. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
5. Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman
6. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
7. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffennegger
8. The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

 

If you enjoyed these few lists then you might very well want to buy the book The Top Ten edited by J Peder Zane in which case follow the link: http://www.toptenbooks.net/buy.html

Featured Author: Jodi Picoult

Whatever Jodi Picoult writes these days goes straight to the top of the New York Times Best Sellers’ List.  Her latest offering, House Rules, is no exception.  Picoult’s novels intrigue me (and everyone else) because she goes where others may not want to go.  She seeks out life situations without easy answers, those situations in which we hope we will never find ourselves or never have to face as a bystander.  A good example of this but not the only one is that of My Sister’s Keeper which was an incredibly popular and poignant novel and was later made into a feature film.

Jodi Picoult (pronounced pee-KOE) was born in Long Island, New York on the 19th May 1966 but moved to New Hampshire when she was 13 years old where she currently lives with her husband and 3 children.  While studying writing at Princeton University she had two short stories published in Seventeen magazine.  Since her graduation she has had various jobs within the writing field: text book editor, technical writer for a Wall Street brokerage firm, copywriter at an ad agency, written 5 issues of the Wonder Woman comic book series for DC Comics in 2007 and has worked as a high school english teacher after which she went to Harvard to complete a Master’s degree in Education.

Some of Picoult’s favourite authors include; Jo-Ann Mapson, Anita Shreve, Ann Hood, Amy Tan, Diana Gabaldon, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Sara Donati, Susan Isaacs, Elinor Lipman, Chris Bohjalian, Ann Tyler, and Jane Hamilton although I have been led to believe her absolute favourite is Alice Hoffman.

Awards

• 2003 New England Bookseller Award for Fiction
• Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association
• Book Browse Diamond Award for novel of the year
• Lifetime achievement award for mainstream fiction from the Romance Writers of America
• 2007 Cosmopolitan magazine’s ‘Fearless Fiction’ Award
• Waterstone’s Author of the Year in the UK
• Vermont Green Mountain Book Award
• Virginia Reader’s Choice Award
• Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award
• Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award

Bibliography

• Songs of the Humpback Whale (1992)
• Harvesting the Heart (1993)
• Picture Perfect (1995)
• Mercy (1996)
• The Pact (1998)
• Keeping Faith (1999)
• Plain Truth (2000)
• Salem Falls (2001)
• Perfect Match (2002)
• Second Glance (2003)
• My Sister’s Keeper (2004)
• Vanishing Acts (2005)
• The Tenth Circle (2006)
• Nineteen Minutes (2007)
• Wonder Woman (vol. 3) #6-10 (cover date: late May 2007 – August 2007)
• Wonder Woman: Love and Murder (2007) (hardcover volume collecting Wonder Woman #6-10)
• Change of Heart (2008)
• Handle With Care (2009)
• House Rules (2010)

Please go to Picoult’s official website for more information.  You will find very interesting interviews with the author which will without a shadow of a doubt reveal more to you about Picoult than I have done here!

www.jodipicoult.com