I am in a horrendous mood, as the world is continuing to go to shit and nothing seems to be able to stop it or even slow it down, but there are still books out there, so I may as well talk about them. I don’t have the energy to make a full post about either of these so let’s just do a couple quick paragraphs each and call it a day.
Samantha Downing’s Too Old For This is a book about a serial killer forced out of retirement when a documentarian comes calling who wants to make a series about her. She was never actually brought to trial for her crimes, but changed her name and moved across the country anyway, and she’s less than interested in someone dragging all of that back into the light again.
She’s in her seventies, by the way.
This book ended up being lightweight and quick and more fun than it probably had any right to be, as Lottie Jones’ life keeps getting upended more and more as she attempts to cover for her crimes– both the old ones before she moved away and the new ones she has to keep committing as she keeps making mistakes that wouldn’t have mattered when she was killing people decades ago but are a bit of a problem in an era of near-constant surveillance by our own possessions. I can imagine a reader who is bothered by the fact that the protagonist is an unrepentant serial killer who we’re more or less expected to like, or at least enjoy reading about, but I’m not that reader and I had fun with this. I may look into more of Samantha Downing’s work if I ever allow myself to buy books again.
So, yeah, okay, I finished it, and it’s a thousand pages long and I have a full-time job and I still finished it in less than a week, and because of that I can’t really call it bad, but … if you weren’t going to buy this anyway, don’t let anyone talk you into it. SenLinYu is a perfectly cromulent author and no one would ever read this book and figure out on their own that it was originally brought into the world as Harry Potter fanfiction, but it’s way overhyped, at least from my perspective. I keep seeing videos about people who were in tears for the last two hundred pages or whatever, and I feel like these people need pets or significant others or something, because in the end it’s just a book and it’s being treated like a life-altering event online. I said in my first post that I was buying this out of FOMO, and I’ve got to stop doing that. I’m never going to be missing out if I don’t read a book TikTok likes.
(I deleted the app again today; we’ll see how long it lasts this time.)
Again, it’s not awful, but it’s definitely romantasy despite all the people insisting that no, it’s dark fantasy— I’m pretty sure “dark fantasy” is just romantasy with at least one rape scene to these people– and I’m tired of romantasy as a genre. It’ll look good on my shelf, and I didn’t hate it like I figured I would, but those are the best things I have to say about it.
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I finished reading Lessons in Chemistry, and in addition to being convinced that every woman should go through life armed with a well-sharpened No. 2 pencil, a high quality kitchen knife, and a foundational knowledge of chemistry, I need to decide what to read next. To Old For This reminds me that American Spy and The Old Woman with the Knife are on my shelves to read. Maybe one of them should be next.
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Tell me more about Lessons in Chemistry.
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Elizabeth Zott is a chemist in the 1950s, facing all of the challenges of a chemist who is an intelligent, physically attractive woman. It is completely relatable in 2025 because not nearly enough progress has been made in the past 75 years. She is also an excellent cook and baker because she approaches it as chemistry. She questions the patriarchy … no, she demands an explanation from the patriarchy every time it seeks to minimize or crush her. When she is fired for being pregnant, she questions why the man who impregnated her would not also be fired.
She ends up hosting a cooking show, and she refuses to be anyone but herself and knows that her audience can learn and understand the chemical processes she is explaining. The work that women do in the home is valuable and difficult, and they should be proud of their accomplishments. She is strongly opinionated and open-minded. She struggles … a lot, but she perseveres, and she builds a support system, sometimes finding allies in unlikely or surprising places.
“Half the population is being wasted.”
“Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize. Marriage counselors would go out of business.”
I don’t know how young would be too young for this book, but I want young people to read it. I want pretty much everyone to read it.
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Just discovered this was $8 for the paperback at Amazon, so it’s on its way.
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If you like ‘Too Old For This’, you might like to watch ‘Keeping Mum’: It’s a dark brit comedy about an elderly woman staying with her daughter and granddaughter, and the killing she does to try to improve their lives.
It has Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith and, weirdly, Patrick Swayze
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