Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

BATB score: 6/10 ⚗️⚛️🧪

*reader discretion advised* maybe BATB really doesn’t like novels

Best for: you must like novels esp long and slow novels; I believe there were 20+ micro-incidences

Best to: well, the book talks about the struggle of being a smart and aspirational female scientist vs societal expectations and gender discrimination back in the 1950s (which most of it is still true today)

BATB linger thought: throughout reading this book, I just wanted the book to end. I just wanted to be done with it. Yet, I had to finished the book because I have come so far. And I need to know how it ends - for the sake of ending a novel not for a curiosity for the character/plot.

Best as: maybe check out “Lessons in Chemistry” on Apple TV+ launched October 2023? 8.3/10 IMDb wow!

Best quotes: “Look, life has never been fair, and yet you continue to operate as if it is - as if once you get a few wrongs straightened out, everything else will fall into place. They won’t. You want my advice? Don’t work the system. Outsmart it.”

“It is not your imagination. Most people are awful.”

“People will always yearn for a simple solution to their complicated problems.”

“Sure, grit was critical, but it also took luck, and if luck wasn’t available, then help. Everyone needed help.”

“Sometimes I think that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn’t make it past noon.”

“Courage is the root of change - and change is what we’re chemically designed to do.”