Author Jodi Picoult Shares Her Favorite Books Of All Time
Best-selling author Jodi Picoult shares some of her favorite books of all time. With more than 40 million copies of her 30 or so books sold all over the world, Picoult is long a favorite of many readers. She’s also known for tackling complex and challenging subjects like school shootings, abortion, racism and more. But Picoult knows nothing may match the flashpoint of her latest book By Any Other Name.
Did Shakespeare write his own plays? Picoult ain’t buying it and lights upon Emilia Bassano–a real-life figure who was the first woman to see her poetry published in England–as likely just one of a number of folk who used the not-so-talented Bill S. as a front. Now nothing riles up folks quite like questioning Shakespeare.
“The book isn't even published yet, and I have academics who have written pieces taking me down and calling me a conspiracy theorist, which is amazing to me,” says Picoult. “How can you discredit a book you haven't read? Also, I write fiction, you know?
"My point is not to rip apart Shakespeare. I think you can be a lover of the works attributed to Shakespeare. We love the language of the plays and of the long poems. What I am suggesting is that if there is credit that should be due other people, then it's worth exploring. And I will lay out my case for you in this book. You can choose to agree with me or not agree with me. And honestly, it doesn't even matter because even if you believe Emilia Bassano had nothing to do with the writing of Shakespeare's plays, she was the first female published poet in all of England, and you should know her name for that reason alone.”
This is no dry work of scholarship. Yet instead of a Shakespeare In Love-like romp, By Any Other Name captures the grim reality of life for women in the 1600s, where Bassano is essentially sold off as a mistress and later physically abused by her lawful husband. She also falls in love with one of the most handsome and prominent men in England while befriending playwright Christopher Marlowe. But alas her story is more tragedy than comedy or romance.
The novel compares Bassano’s life in Elizabethan England with that of Melina Green, a female playwright in contemporary America. Sadly, the result shows how far we haven’t come: the playwright isn’t taken seriously until she enters a competition under a man’s name. Picoult has several musicals to her credit and more on the way, including a West End production of The Book Thief musical in 2025 and an adaptation of Shannon Hale’s Austenland she’s working away on. So when discussing women and theater, she knows whereof she speaks.
“So I started writing in theater about 10 years ago, which is such a privilege and really energized my love for writing all over again,” says Picoult. “It was really a shot in the arm. I was surprised by how male-dominated the world of Broadway is. Everything that Melina Green hears in my book is something that I was told to my face.”
Courtesy of Ballantine Books
By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult ($30; Ballantine Books) Buy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Picoult talks engagingly about everything: writing, her commercial success, the shaky case for Shakespeare writing his own plays and the many issues her novels raise. She also loves books and happily shares some of her favorite and most influential books, starting with a question about Shakespeare. She’s often mentioned Romeo & Juliet as her favorite love story. Is it also her favorite play attributed to Shakespeare? .
Author Jodi Picoult Shares Her Favorite Books Of All Time
Courtesy of Oxford School Shakespeare
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare*
“The funniest thing is, it was the first Shakespeare play I ever read. So here we are again,” says Picoult, who had mentioned earlier when fans name their favorite book of hers, it’s often the first one they read. “That's my favorite, right? Most people think it's a really pedantic play. But I will always have a soft spot for the play because I've been very happily married for 35 years and I'm still waiting for the guy who walks up to me and we automatically speak sonnets together. It hasn't happened, but I haven't lost hope yet.
“I saw the Tom Holland production in England several months ago. He was great. He did a totally serviceable job. Honestly, his Juliet [actor Francesca Anewudah-Rivers] was phenomenal. But the show itself was so highly stylized, and I'd never seen that director's work before–Jamie Lloyd. Everyone I was with was like, oh, that's just Jamie Lloyd. I think I might prefer a classic version.”
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare* ($10.99; Oxford School Shakespeare) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
*maybe?
Related: Bestselling Author T.J. Newman Shares Her Favorite Books
Courtesy of Yearling
All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
“We were a big library family,” says Picoult, “so my mom and I used to go to the library twice a week. We would each come home with a stack of books. My mother was always reading, she absolutely modeled that behavior for me. And when I was really little [the All-of-a-Kind Family] is the first series I remember falling in love with. It was about a turn of the century Jewish family in New York. Yeah, I just remember inhaling those books. But they all came from the library.
“I honestly do not remember if my mom found it or if it was a librarian. But, you know, it was like, it was the best kind of book, because you read one and you were hooked. It was like potato chips and you had to keep eating them. Libraries were definitely part of my childhood. And then my first job was as a page in a library, which is very much a self fulfilling prophecy. You're the ones who shelve the books when they come in. The nice thing about being a page in the library is when it was slow, you could read.”
All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor ($7.99; Yearling) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Scribner
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
“You know, there are lots of books from my childhood that read very differently today,” says Picoult “Little House is one of them, for multiple reasons that have to do with race and with indigenous people. The book that made me want to be a writer was Gone With The Wind. And I stand by that. It's what made me want to create worlds out of words. But when I have gone back and reread it as an adult, I'm very conscious of a lot of the racial flaws in that book, right? But you know what? What I love about books is that books stay the same, and because of that, you get to see how far you've come since you first read them, and how much you've grown as a person.
“I think I was 12 when I read it and it was a big, long book and I just…I was such a nerd. I memorized huge, sweeping passages, and I could recite them out loud at the time. This is probably why I didn't have a boyfriend until I was 15. But I just loved it, it was the language in that book that blew me away. Oh my gosh, this is how you do it. This is how you make a world in someone else's mind.”
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell ($20.99; Scribner) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Penguin
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
“I think it came from an aunt or my grandmother and it's a book that I've read multiple times,” says Picoult about the best book she ever received as a gift. “You know, it's a very subversive book. Jane Austen is such a careful observer of society. Of course, when I first read it I'm looking at this swoony love story. And now you look at it and you're like, okay, so headstrong girl and guy who's probably on the autism spectrum! You're looking at how they are negotiating the terms of that relationship and how they have to learn how to communicate with each other. But you're also looking at the mores and the strictures that kept people apart at the time. So it's one of those books that to me reads differently every time I look at it.”
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ($9; Penguin) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Related: Author Kate DiCamillo on the Book That Changed Her Life and Other Favorites
Courtesy of One World
Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
“I think is a seminal work of literature which I think every white person should read, honestly,” says Picoult, when asked to name a book she loves to give as a gift. “It was the thing that made me most understand what it was to grow up in this country with skin that's a different color than mine. I think I gave 20 copies of that away.”
Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates ($26; One World) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
Courtesy of Tor Books
The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
“The other book that I always gift is The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, which I just loved,” says Picoult. “It's one of those books that I wish I had written first; I’m so jealous that I didn't. It's about a woman who makes a deal with the devil for immortality but–in doing so–no one will remember her name. And so in a way there's a tie in to what I've written here with By Any Other Name, because it is about whether or not you'd be willing to trade credit and leaving your mark on the world, just to make sure that you know you existed in some way. Actually, I hadn't put that together yet, until now.”
The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab ($19.99; Tor Books) Buy now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org
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