Nate's Book Reviews

By Nate Feldman Summary: A dead body is found on top of a tent.  Who was it and why were they killed?   Betsy Martin is the host of Bake Week , a reality TV show where people are recruited throughout the United States to compete against one another in hopes of winning the Golden Spoon, the award for the best baker.  The show takes place at Grafton Manor, her family's estate in Vermont.   The six individuals picked for the tenth year of the show, Lottie, Stella, Hannah, Gerald, Peter, and Pradyumna come from a variety of backgrounds and experiences with baking, and each have their own unique reasons for taking part in the show.   As the competition progresses, some contestants feel their bakes were sabotaged, and others are being taken advantage of by the show's hosts.  Meanwhile, some are trying to unlock mysteries of Grafton Manor.  All of this will climax in someone's death and lead to who did this and why. Opinion: The nice thing abou...

  By Nate Feldman Lessons in Chemistry is the 2022 debut novel for author Bonnie Garmus which tells the story of  Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant Chemist, who deals with severe workplace discrimination in the late 1950s-early 1960s America when women were not expected to have big professional ambitions.  Eventually, Zott gains national fame as the host of a cooking show, in which she not only teaches people to prepare dinner in a unique way, often referring to things as chemical compounds than their actual name, but also raises awareness about important social issues.  Plot Summary: The novel begins by giving Elizabeth’s backstory, mentioning that she was on the road to getting a Ph.D at UCLA when a prestigious faculty member sexually assaulted her.  This incident inspires her to carry a number 2 pencil in her head the rest of the story as she used this to as a weapon against her attacker.  She has to leave school and begins working at the Hastings Research Ins...