Mother's Day

 Have a bookish mother in your life? Here are some books that might make her day.

 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

“For Elizabeth, cooking wasn’t some preordained feminine duty. As she’d told Calvin, cooking was chemistry. That’s because cooking actually is chemistry.”

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“What a gift it was to know so clearly what you were not, who you did not want to be. Nina wasn’t sure she’d ever asked herself that question.”

Ms. Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

“How could she not be depleted when she came home, having been exposed for hours, without protection, to all those thrumming radiant selves? Here they were, just old enough to have discovered their souls, but not yet dulled by the ordinary act of survival, not yet practiced in dissembling.”

Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles

“To Simon, the world of musical structures was far more real than the shoddy saloons in which he had to play. Nothing could match it, nothing in this day-to-day world could ever come up to it. It existed outside him. It was better than he was. He was always on foot in that world, an explorer in busted shoes.”

The Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell'Antonia

“Good fried chicken was remarkably hard to come by in New York, but this---tender, with just enough crust-only bits protruding, skin peeling easily away from the meat---this was good. The fries were thin and still hot, some with crunch, some with bite, lightly sprinkled with the salt blend they'd always used. The biscuits were fresh and flaky, and the salad's iceberg lettuce was dressed in Mimi's trademark sweet oil dressing---a closely guarded (but really very simple, and once very common) recipe.”

Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

“It was the dandelion principle! To some people a dandelion might look like a weed, but to others that same plant can be so much more. To an herbalist, it’s a medicine—a way of detoxifying the liver, clearing the skin, and strengthening the eyes. To a painter, it’s a pigment; to a hippie, a crown; a child, a wish. To a butterfly, it’s sustenance; to a bee, a mating bed; to an ant, one point in a vast olfactory atlas.”