This
week, I decided to review Amelia Olsen’s terrific blog post about Mercy
by Jodi Picoult. I thought Amelia did a really great job of giving enough (but
not too much) background information in a way that made it easy for readers to
understand, digging deeper into the author’s tactics of writing other books and
comparing them to this one, and thinking about clever ways she could improve
the book.
I haven’t read this book, but I was
still able to understand what Amelia was trying to say because of the background
information she gave me. I could also understand what Amelia meant because I’m
going through a similar experience with my book, which is written by the author
of my favorite series, but isn’t as good as their other books and also “doesn’t
fit together” as Amelia said about her book. Amelia was able to find the good
aspects of the book as well as the “bad” aspects of it at the same time. She
said that it didn’t compare to Jodi Picoult’s other books, but was still
interesting. She also did a good job of thinking about the author’s purpose,
like when she said, “I think that the author challenged herself when writing
this one,”
This post actually does make me want
to read the book. Amelia’s description of the plot seems very interesting, and
really different from most of the books I’ve been reading nowadays. I also
haven’t read many Jodi Picoult books, so I probably wouldn’t be expecting so
much from the book, not knowing her style of writing. I can understand,
however, why Amelia would be disappointed with this book if it’s not up to par
with the author’s previous books, just like I am with mine at the moment. When
we have expectations from great writers, books that don’t amount to some of
their better ones are more shocking than those from authors you don’t read
much.
This post made me think about my post, The
Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict Blog Post, when I described
the repetitive-ness of the book, and the abundance of unnecessary details. I
was disappointed with Trenton Lee Stewart’s book since I’d read his fantastic
series, The Mysterious Benedict Society, and The Extraordinary
Education of Nicholas Benedict in comparison to The Mysterious Benedict
Society isn’t nearly as good.
I really liked the way Amelia wrote this
blog post. She was able to include background information about a very
complicated plot while keeping it interesting and making it easy for the reader
to understand. She thought about the author’s purpose, and was able to dig
deeper and highlight the author’s tactics in her other books and compare them
to this one. She was also able to pinpoint things she would have done to make
the book better, like changing the title and giving lots of evidence to prove
her point.
Great Job, Amelia!
Link to Amelia's Blog Post: http://allflyby.blogspot.com/2013/02/mercy.html
