Barnes & Noble announced that Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry is its Book of the Year.
Garmus’ debut novel, published in April by Doubleday, follows a scientist and single mother in the 1960s who becomes the host of a popular cooking show. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “A more adorable plea for rationalism and gender equality would be hard to find.”
“Our booksellers are most proud to make Lessons in Chemistry the 2022 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year,” Barnes & Noble said. “This blockbuster debut is not only charming, funny, and whip-smart but proves that life, like science, is unpredictable.”
The bookstore chain also announced that R.F. Kuang’s Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution won the first-ever Barnes & Noble Speculative Fiction Book Award.
Kuang’s novel, published in August by Harper Voyager, is about a Chinese boy brought to 19th-century England to study languages at Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation. There he learns of a secret society working against British imperialism. A Kirkus reviewer gave the book a starred review, calling it “dark academia as it should be.”
“Barnes & Noble’s inaugural Speculative Fiction Book Award goes to R. F. Kuang's Babel, a dark academia standalone that’s smart, witty, and terrifying—the type of book you can’t stop reading and can’t stop recommending!” Barnes & Noble said.
Previous Barnes & Noble Books of the Year have included Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders and Paul McCartney’s The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
