Featured Events

Volusia Reads Together is a community reading program dedicated to creating shared conversations and providing a range of related events and activities.

March 2025
The featured book for 2025 is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, set in late 1950s and early 1960s Southern California.

There are many exciting programs planned to enrich the book selection. This booklet is designed to help navigate programs such as community book discussions, crafts, music, and many more engaging programs.

All Volusia Reads Together programs are free and open to the public. Seating is limited in some programs. All supplies will be provided while supplies last. Registration is not required unless otherwise indicated. If registration is required, call the branch library or register online at volusialibrary.org.

   Hello, Volusia County Public Library Community!

   I’m incredibly honored to hear your library has selected my book for
   your spring reads.

   I have many things on my website you can read or use that will
   probably provide more background than you’ve ever wanted. I
   also have an Instagram account – more there!

   Thanks for selecting my book!

•    Bonnie Garmus

 

   Lessons in Chemistry has won many prestigious awards and made the New York
   Times Book Readers Picks list for the best one hundred books of the last 25
   years.

   Part of the reason readers find this book so enjoyable is that 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
   as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s, and her all-male team at Hastings
   Research Institute takes 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 doesn’t always follow a straight line. 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. Elizabeth’s unusual
   approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of
   sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not
   everyone is happy. That’s because Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women
   to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.  
 
   Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of
   supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its
   protagonist.

 

About the Author

Bonnie Garmus is a copywriter and creative director who has worked widely in the fields of technology, medicine, and education. She’s an open-water swimmer, a rower, and mother to two pretty amazing daughters. Born in California and most recently from California, she currently lives in London with her husband and dog, 99.

Dear Reader:

Lessons in Chemistry tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in the late 1950s and early 1960s who’s fired from her research job for the horrific crime of being unwed and pregnant. To make ends meet, she reluctantly accepts a job as a TV cooking show host. But what she doesn’t accept are the brainless cue cards she’s asked to read, nor the tight dresses she’s told to wear.

Instead, Elizabeth decides to teach her mostly female viewers chemistry. Because cooking is chemistry. And along the way, she empowers them to say no to society’s limitations, to stand up and be who they really are.

While reviewers have generously called Lessons in Chemistry “funny,” “delightful,” “witty,” and “wise,” it’s my hope you’ll also find Elizabeth’s rational approach to life a serious inspiration for our times.

Happy Reading!

Bonnie