Lessons in Chemistry

 

OK – – so I got this book to read with having absolutely no clue at all what it was about. I got it because there was so much hype about it. I kept seeing it over and over and over …mentioned anywhere that books were being discussed.  No, from judging a book by its cover, I totally thought it would be like a fun, funny, maybe romantic comedy type of thing. In a way I guess it was… But it also wasn’t. This book is so hard for me to describe. There definitely were funny moments in the book – – although most of them, in my opinion, came from the dog in the story that was named Six-thirty (that alone is kinda funny). Without giving too much of the story away in case you do want to read it, it is mostly about a woman named Elizabeth who is a scientist in the 1950s.  You can imagine this was highly unusual for the time and came with a plethora of unique challenges.  Again, while there are definitely funny little anecdotes and whatnot in the book, it deals actually with a lot more social type issues in that era – – mainly being sexism.  There’s a very strong anti-religion theme that runs through the entire book that I kept thinking/maybe hoping – – would rectify itself as the story went on… but it did persist basically until the last page, so, no luck there.  Now, we all know people personally that are atheists or have very different views on religion from ourselves— however, the theme in this book was just so strong that I felt like it was honestly bordering on pushing an agenda written between the lines that many wouldn’t even fully realize…??… I could have of course been reading into things but I will be honest, I was not a fan.  It bordered on uncomfortable, like why am I reading this, for me.  So. To each their own.  Apparently this book is highly loved—it has very high ratings. Just not for me. This is not a book I would “recommend,” other than for people’s curiosity just to see what all the hype is about – – but in my opinion, not for some phenomenal story.

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