3·
7 hours agoMy MIL raved about Lessons in Chemistry and was excited to share it with me. I was shocked by how poorly written it was— perhaps it’s a decent story (enough people were enamored with it that it made it onto several best seller lists), but the execution was so bad I couldn’t even finish the first chapter. When asked, I ended up just telling my MIL it wasn’t my cup of tea and crossed my fingers she didn’t want to discuss plot points or anything that would make it obvious I hardly cracked the spine.
Interesting. I haven’t read Dust yet, but I thought the first two were fantastic reads. I also really like the TV adaptation so far. I agree it doesn’t fit well into the hard science fiction subgenre. I would categorize the books as soft sci-fi— focusing more on the social aspects of an isolated society with limited resources where technological advancement is restricted. I’m more of a soft-sciences nerd though, so I get it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
I’m not sure what you mean about the premise of “wool” in the story though? Are you wondering why it is important enough to be the book title? To my knowledge, the name of the first book is not solely derived from the wool pads used by the cleaners… this first book is actually a compilation of shorter novellas “woven” together (haha)(the author’s titles allude to this: Proper Gauge, Casting Off, etc). I particularly like the author’s juxtaposition between these textile-related terms/concepts and the alternate definitions that lend themselves to the dystopian setting of Mechanical and the Silo in general.