Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

I just started reading “Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult. This book is about a schools shooting and the different perspectives of the multiple people involved. One of the main characters Josie was shot but survived the book is mainly about her and her mother who happens to be a judge, and what happens to this girl and her life.

This book really made me think about schools and how safe they really are. I mean these kids in the book woke up one morning and thought they were just going to school on a normal day and then BAM suddenly this happens. It’s crazy to think about that. It’s also really scary because this also just happened in real life in Newtown Connecticut. When you think of schools you think of a safe place where children learn, not a place where there is blood and death. You might think to yourself this would never happen at my school, but I’m sure that the kids in this book thought that and the mothers of the kids in Newtown thought that too. Humans are extremely unpredictable, they are also scary, and crazy. People can do irrational dangerous things and no body knows why.  You can’t control anything that another human does no matter how hard you try, that’s the unbelievable scariness of the whole situation.

In the book everything just starts happening at such a rapid pace people are running and there is tons of chaos everywhere. When there are schools shootings I’m sure it’s really is like that. What are you supposed to do when that happens? When you see you’re friends and teachers falling to their deaths right in front of your eyes what in the world are you supposed to feel or think? The thing is you can’t even feel or think you’re just running trying to save your own life.

This book also makes me feel depressed. It’s just really sad to think about something like this happening to other people. Although it’s a book it has been happening more and more lately in real life. Thinking about high schools students getting shot, and then thinking about young children being shot just gets me really upset. How did these people get these guns? Why did they do these things? I wonder once you start killing if you just can’t stop. Do these people even think about what they’re doing when they do it? In this book I have yet to find out who actually was the shooter. I’m wondering if it was a friend of Josie’s. I wonder if it was why they did it.

We as people can try and try to figure out why certain people do certain things. Were they mentally ill were they depressed were they trying to get revenge? There are so many questions that can’t be answered. I’m sure that people are always trying to figure out the answers to these questions. What makes me the most sad though is I just don’t really know if they are ever going to be answered. Once it’s done it’s done, especially if the shooter killed himself as well.

Why are humans so cruel. I think people can definitely blame it on mental illness or being crazy and that could contribute to it but then again how could anyone kill so easy so fast without feeling bad. Do shooters even feel bad? Do they have time to feel bad, I don’t know. There are so many questions like I said before that aren’t or can’t be answered.

This book is already very suspenseful and sad. I really want to find out what happens in order to attempt to get some answers.