What I'm Reading...

OK, so as soon as the birds start chirping and the flowers start blooming and the pollen starts floating in the breeze...I get the reading bug. It's the opposite for me than for most people. Most people prefer to read in the winter, when the days are short and the weather is less than optimal. True, I read year round, but come Spring, I start reading more than one book at a time. This is what I'm reading now...I actually finished "The Mermaid Chair" this afternoon, so I'm looking for a replacement. Jodi Picoult is one of my all-time favorite authors. I share her whenever I can, and my niece now loves her as well. (she also reads numerous books at a time/must be genetic!). Anyway, this new book, "Change of Heart" and it's storyline, troubled me initially; it has a lot of religion and spirituality in it, and sometimes when authors try to write about either of those things, they really don't know what they're talking about most of the time,and end up being really irritated, so I was fearful that Jodi would say something that would change the way I view her as an author forever. I have been pleasantly surprised. In this book, one of the characters, who's incarcerated, begins to perform miracles. They are similar in type and in chronological order, to the miracles that Jesus performed while he was alive. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm positive that there is an explanation for these so called "miracles", I just haven't gotten that far in the book yet. Anyway, just as I was hoping, Jodi blew me away in one chapter when she wrote about one of the main characters "June", having prayer with a priest. The priest was saying the Lord's Prayer, and the main character, June, (who is a professed/but teetering atheist/former believer) is praying with him...or pretending to. As he says the prayer, this is what Jodi wrote about the main character...this is how the main character felt after participating in the prayer with the priest...." Beside me, Father Michael's voice began to move over the hills and valleys of the simplest of prayers;
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". Before I realized what I was doing, my own mouth had started to form the words, a muscle memory. And to my surprise, instead of it feeling false or forced, it made me relieved, as if I had just passed the baton to someone else. "Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." It felt like putting on flannel pajamas on a snowy night; like turning on your blinker for the exit that you know will take you home." This is why I love Jodi Picoult. She puts into words the things that I feel. So what are you guys reading?????????