If You're Reading Small Great Things

If you didn't already know, Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult is our next book on Judging More Than Just the Cover: Book Club. This week, I finished reading it. This book, as I’m sure we’ll discuss, was very hard to read, emotionally. I powered through and was over halfway on Wednesday, January 6th.

I read the section about the white supremacist who got angry and was trying to whip his friends into a mob and go on a violent rampage. Everyone the character contacted told him no.

About an hour later, in real life, the Capitol was broken into by that mob of terrorists.

Fictional white supremacists were more restrained than real ones.

A fictional bailiff who towed a screaming character out of a courtroom did more to quell white supremacy than Capitol Police.  

I can’t really get over the juxtaposition of what I read and what happened. The coincidence of the timing. I’m sure it’ll come up on the podcast, which we’re recording later this month. If you’re still in a fragile place after Wednesday, put off reading Small Great Things for a little while, the majority of the book will only make you angry and anxious. There is resolution though, as any book requires, so if you’re in the thick of it now, push through.