SINGAPORE - This week, The Sunday Times puts new books on art, science and academia under the microscope.
1. Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
"Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself," commands Elizabeth Zott, the brisk, no-nonsense star of the 1960s cooking show, Supper At Six.
In her television show, salt is sodium chloride, vinegar is acetic acid and cooking is a science. Her viewers, a nation of underappreciated American housewives, say they love her because she respects their minds.
Unbeknownst to them, Elizabeth is also a groundbreaking chemist. She was the only woman on the team at the Hastings Research Institute before she was forced to leave and put her dreams on hold.
2. Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
Taiwanese-American writer Elaine Hsieh Chou takes on uncomfortable subjects such as racial stereotypes, cultural appropriation and yellowface (the act of putting on make-up so as to pass off as an East Asian by someone of a different skin colour) in Disorientation.
Her irreverent debut has a hook that seems outrageous on the surface, but is based on real events.
3. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
"More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colours," wrote Elizabeth Bishop in her poem The Map.
Maps represent the real world so their readers can find their way around it, but what if it were the other way around? Do some maps in fact transform the reality they are meant to depict?
American author Peng Shepherd made her debut in 2018 with the apocalyptic bestseller The Book Of M. Her second novel takes the perennial dilemma of the cartographer - accuracy versus artistic licence - and spins it into a nerdy thriller.
