Six Degrees of Separation

The #6degrees meme is hosted at Books are my Favourite and Best.

I had fun with this meme last month, but have not read this month's starting book, Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby (#1) so I didn't think I would play this month. Then I read the #6degrees post at annabookbel and I had my starting link! Anabel says: 

"Fever Pitch is about Arsenal, so I thought of a 'red shirt' link to Star Trek -- but couldn't make it work." 

So I am starting my chain with Redshirts by John Scalzi (#2). This is the story of one of those anonymous crewmen on the Star Trek ship Enterprise who wears a red shirt and is getting a bit anxious about how many of his fellow-red-shirters don't return from their missions. After reading and loving this book I went on to read another Scalzi novel, Lock in (#3). This is a thriller the plot of which revolves around a murder set in a world where 'Haden's syndrome,' a disease that affects millions of people who are "fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus,"  has changed the societal landscape. Another novel where a fast spreading disease has changed the society is Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (#4). Many of the characters in Mandel's novel are Shakespearean actors, which connects to Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood (#5) which is about a Shakespearean actor/director who takes his work into a prison where he leads inmates in a literacy program through a production of The Tempest. There are several things that make the in-prison production unique including the use of several original rap songs to tell sections of the story. That made me think of another book that you wouldn't immediately see as lending itself to a rap-music interpretation but that did, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (#6), which was the basis for the smash-hit musical Hamilton. So I begin and end this chain with books I haven't read.