In this week’s What Book find out which best-selling author Jodi Picoult doesn’t like

What Book…

Best-selling author Jodi Picoult

… are you reading now?

I’ve just finished The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness. It’s a continuation of the Discovery Of Witches series, and gives an updated glimpse at the lives of married couple Diana and Matthew – a witch and a vampire – and their children.

Harkness is an academic who happens to be a fiction writer, and she was helpful to me while I was creating the world of Elizabethan England in my new novel – which, coincidentally, is very similar to building a fantasy world like the one she has created in this series. Her books leave you believing the magical world might just be real.

… would you take to a desert island?

It’s gonna have to be a long one, right? I’m going to say the Shadows Of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. She wrote one of my favourite books – The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue – and she is a master storyteller. This series is about several different Londons, all overlaid on top of each other and accessible only to a few through magic portals. It’s got a little of everything – romance, fantasy, history. And it’s easily 1,000 pages, which means I will be distracted from the fact that no one has rescued me.

All-Of-A-Kind Family was the first book Jodi Picoult needed read 

… first gave you the reading bug?

There was a chapter book series called the All-Of-A-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor, about a turn-of-the-century Jewish family in New York. My mom gave me the first in the series when I was quite young, and it was the first time I remember having that zing of ‘needing’ to read the next one the moment I finished the last. The girls were so incredibly different from me, but I could also relate to all the family dynamics.

… left you cold?

Nearly anything Nicholas Sparks writes. Listen, I’m a sucker for a good love story, but for years very talented women have been writing romance and have been belittled for it, because it’s considered lesser than other fiction (even though it’s a bestselling genre).

Then, The Notebook arrived – a romance novel, albeit written by a man – and you’d think he had reinvented the wheel. I have never understood why, when a woman writes about home and family, it’s considered chick lit . . . and when a man does it, he wins a book prize or is lauded for his bravery.

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult (Michael Joseph, £22) is out now.