My Sister's Keeper

...is the title of the book I just finished. The book is about a 13-year-old girl who is suing her parents for the medical rights to her own body because all of her life she's been a blood and tissue donor for her sick older sister. This compelling story is told from the points of view of several different characters and explores a family's dynamics where everyone's life focuses and has been focused on one of their teenage daughters and her lifelong battle with a rare form of cancer. What happens in that book made be burn through it in only 3 sittings. You'll need a box of tissues for this one. I was pretty wrecked by the ending.

My Sister's Keeper was written by Jodi Piccoult and it's the second book of hers that I've read. The first book I read from Piccoult is called The Pact which deals with the aftermath of a pact where one of the suicidal teenagers survives. That's also a good read. And after that one you'll have second thoughts about children using public bathrooms alone. That's all I'm going to say about that one.

Both books were recommended to me by J, my sister-in-law. She's currently reading a third by Piccoult book called Vanishing Acts. The plot revolves around a woman who as an adult discovers that the man who raised her, that she thought was her father was actually a kidnapper who abducted her years and years ago. I'll probably read that one after I finish the book I'm currently exploring.

That book would be the Dover edition of Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I've had a hankerling lately to read the book that was the basis for a legacy of mostly ridiculous movies about a man raised by apes and living in the junble. But the book is off to a good start. It's written in that Victorian era style that combines third person accounts with first person narrative. I've made it past the mutiny that caused Tarzan's parents to be stranded in the jungle in the first place and just started reading about the apes that I guess will eventually adopt little Tarzan.

I'll let you know what happens.