Bonnie Garmus is a copywriter/creative director who has worked for a wide range of clients, focusing primarily on technology, medicine, and education. She is an open-water swimmer, a rower, and mother to two wonderful daughters. Most recently from Seattle, she currently lives in London with her husband and her dog, 99.
Today, to celebrate the upcoming release of her debut novel, Lessons in Chemistry (a blockbuster read set in 1960s California, introducing the unique and unforgettable Elizabeth Zott), Bonnie Garmus is on the blog to share some of her favourite books with us! Read on …
Bonnie Garmus
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh — Harriet was a role model for me—she’s the reason I started keeping notebooks.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl — I know — in Dahl’s original, the pygmy Oompa Loompas from “the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white men had ever been before …” was … yikes … not good. But at least he went back and changed them (although, admittedly, it took a while). Anyway, when I was a kid, I wrote Dahl and told him how much I loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (I’d also written other authors — it’s just what I did whenever I loved a book that much.) I never heard back from anyone — I’d come to accept that authors were very busy people and probably got a thousand such letters a week. But then one day, several months later, I came home from school and my mom said, “who in the world would be writing you all the way from England?” Dahl!
Old Yeller by Frank Gipson — It’s not possible to read this book without weeping.
The Cider House Rules by John Irving — For the storytelling, his stand on abortion, his amazing writing.
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier — Like Old Yeller … impossible not to cry.
Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple — Impossible not to laugh. I think humour is hard — she’s a genius.
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld — Sittenfeld sees right through everything and everyone and writes with such grace and honesty, even when she’s reinventing real people. Only Sittenfeld could make me adore Laura Bush.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt — Another life-changing book, and bonus, it includes Greek. I love Tartt. You know how everyone thought The Goldfinch was too long? I thought it could have been longer.
Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger — I love nearly everything Salinger as written, but this was my favourite. Amazing in its intellect and simplicity.
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro — It’s perfect. There isn’t a single word or comma or anything in this book that isn’t exactly right.
The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead — The best two books ever written on morality—or rather the lack thereof.
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx — I love her characterisations, dialogue, cadence.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara — The most difficult read on sexual abuse I’ve ever encountered and yet interlaced with amazing passages of theoretical thought.
Pobby and Dingham by Ben Rice — A fable about faith—I absolutely loved this.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong — His language and grace is incomparable; so obviously a poet.
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez: But also What Are You Going Through — I’m obsessed with Nunez. I love the way she interlaces humour with day-to-day tragedy. Everything she writes always feels so honest and smart and short and to the point.
And most broadly, the Russians, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (specifically, Anna Karenina); and all of Dickens (specifically Great Expectations). It’s been a long time since I’ve read any of them. Still, they’re on the list.
—Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Penguin Books Australia) is out on the 29th of March.
Lessons in Chemistry
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one- Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with - of all things - her mind. True chemistry results.
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America's most beloved cooking show Supper at Six...
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Comments
June 3, 2023 at 4:48 pm
I have just finished Lessons in Chemistry and just loved it.