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Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Note: This and the next few posts today have been sitting in my drafts for literally months. I'm not as far behind as the dates suggest.
Around the internet, I've seen some clips of a show called Lessons In Chemistry. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, the series is an Apple TV exclusive, and even if I owned a single apple product, I can't see myself ever paying for yet another streaming service. All this to note that I'm also reading this book from the context of having seen some of a series about it, just random clips here and there.
By pure chance, I happened across a book by the same title. I thought, perhaps, they might be related, and on closer inspection, they were. I thought, why not?
My chosen medium for this one was an audiobook. It's just short of 12 hours, 6 for me since I tend to consume most things at 2x speed. This works out faster than I can read written text. Speed was of importance for this one - if I'm to meet my goal of one book every 2 weeks, I needed to get through this one quickly, since for around a week I was too ill from my recent trip to London to have any leftover energy after work. Okay... I started this book at noon on Sunday, and am writing this that same day.
Looking into the timings, the series premiered on 13th October, 2023. The book was published in April 2022. That's only 19 months between the two. The author, Bonnie Garmus, said in an interview that she didn't have much input for the scripting and production of the TV adaptation. I considered that maybe the book had been written specifically to be adapted into a series, though I've found no evidence of this, and I won't pretend to have anything more than a slight feeling that the book-to-TV pipeline happened rather quickly.
This book forced me to confront that the 1960s were 60, closer to 70, years ago. It seems like such a long time ago, and also no time at all. Of course, I wasn't around in the 60s, and I wouldn't be for a while yet. Reading something set in this era, which I havent' seen much of historically, makes me glad I wasn't around then. I really do benefit a lot from both the relative tolerance and the technological advancement of this age.
I absolutely loved how 6:30 was presented as a character.
Lessons in Chemistry was a decent way outside everything I usually read and watch (those being non-fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy), but still quite enjoyable.