Outside Reading #2

I just finished reading Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult. I thought the ending wasn't really the end. The novel just kind of stopped, almost like there should have been a few more chapters. I felt like Picoult left out important parts of the novel by just ending it. For example, a good portion of the novel is about Paige and trying to find herself (similar to Animal Dreams) and trying to win back her husband Nicholas after she leaves to find her mother and find out why she left. In the end though, you never find out if they get back together or not, it kind of leaves it up to the reader to decide. But with that, I also feel that there should have been more.
The novel I started reading today is The Memory Keeper's Daughter. I have only read a few pages of it, byut so far it seems really good. All I have read thus far is that this doctor's wife has gone into labor (1965) and she gives birth to twins, one of each a girl and boy. The boy is born in good health whereas the little girl is born with downsyndrom. At the time, children with downsyndrom were immidiately shipped off to be raised with people "of their own kind" which is exactly what happened. THat is all I have read so far, but it seems to be a pretty good novel so far.

Outside Reading #1

I am currently reading Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult. I chose to read it because I absolutely love her books, and I hadn't read it yet. Harvesting the Heart is about a girl whose mother ran away at age five. When she grows up and becomes a mother herself, she feels she is no good at being a parent and leaves just like her mother did. She leaves her husband, who is a surgon so he is always at work, and her three month old baby at home. When she leaves, she goes out to find her mother. The novel explores the ideas of why her mother left her and how things like this have an long term effect.
"I had expected more from you. The words brought back the image of his father, standing over him like an impenetratable basilisk and holding out a prep school physics exam bearing the only grade lower than an A that Nicholas had recived in his whole life" (Picoult 270). I chose this quote because I think it shows the power of an adult figure, like a parent's, influence and opinion. As much as people want to say that they aren't influenced by what other people say, I think that deep down they care about what their parents say. Also, I think that the idea of falling below what your parents expect from you is also something that alot of people don't like the idea of.