Nineteen Minutes

Spent the entire day studying (sorta) and when then I decided to take a break. Slept for a while, and when I woke, I saw a novel by Jodi Picoult next to me. I guess it was my reflexes that made me reach for it.. Even when I was half-asleep, I opened and started to read...and I couldn't put it down.

It's about a 17year old boy who one day walked into his school with a gun, and killed 10 people, wounded many, all in 19 minutes.

Jodi Picoult is one of my favourite authors. I love how she tells the story, whizzing back and forth from the past, into the future. One page would be the present, and the next would be '20 years ago'. I love how she makes it seem that everything's connected. One decision made 20 years ago, would affect things today. Even a simple decision, like not cleaning the cupboard or taking the shortcut instead of the usual route to work. Then ..I love how she introduces so many characters..how they relate to each other, even if it's a small relation. Like, the paperboy. You'd never know that because that paperboy wrongly delivered your paper, you didn't read about the news about a certain kid who met in an accident many towns away.
And that kid's your son.

I've read a few of her books. Keeping Faith, was about a young girl who was convinced she was seeing God.. The Tenth Circle, about a daughter who was raped, and her dad going all out to protect her. And Mercy, about a couple in love, the girl has cancer and ask her guy to kill her. And he did.

All of her stories always involve court cases. I love how she gets her point across..that she tries to tell her readers that there are no bad people in this world, just people who makes bad choices. There's always a story, a reason behind every person. Because no one would do anything to hurt someone else on purpose, there is always a reason.

''Nobody wants to admit this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe that's because it's all a chain, and a long time ago someone did the first bad thing, and that led someone else to do another bad thing, and so on. You know, like that game where you whisper a sentence into someone's ear, and that person whispers it to someone else, and it all comes out wrong in the end.

But then again, maybe bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like.''

Nineteen Minutes..is a book that after just reading the first two chapters, it got my heart beating fast. Because Jodi made me fell in love with this character, a boy named Peter. How he grew up loving and adorable, wanting to be like Superman. How he did all the nicest things and said all the nicest words. When he first got his glasses, he loved wearing them because he felt he had x-ray vision. All he wanted was to be liked by everyone. He stole my heart.

And then he walked into his school and killed 10 people. Revenge.

And when I couldn't come to terms with how someone like him, could do something as horrible like that.. Peter said this ..

''They started it''

I then stopped reading because..well, I just had to.