You're listening to Reading Glasses, a show about book culture and literary life designed

to help you read better.

I'm author and book devour, Mallory O'Mara, and I'm Bria Grant, filmmaker and e-reader.

This episode, we're tackling a big question.

Do you wait for a series to finish, to be finished, for someone to finish the series, finish

it out before you, as a reader, start it?

But first, what are you reading, Bria?

I just finished a book that...

No, I told me this was on the Glasser Best of List, because I, like, so we just did

like the, our episode of the best books of the year so far, up through end of June, basically.

And I got this off of a list, and I can't remember if it was the Glasser List, or it was just

like a general list from another website, but it's Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmas.

No, I don't think I saw that.

OK, it was on a lot of other lists, because when I was making my list...

Who said he's the cover of this?

I did, because I actually will say I think the cover is deceiving.

But I really enjoyed this book, and I think people would really like this book.

It is about a chemist, a female chemist in the 60s, where it's not, it was not a great

time to be a female chemist, who is basically about her life in a very, like, non-traditional

approach to life, where she didn't want to get married, she didn't want to have kids,

she ends up dating this other chemist, and this is not giving anything away.

This is all, like, on the side of the book, and it becomes a single mother at some point,

...