Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Beach Read by Emily Henry which I listened to on audio and quite enjoyed in February 2021 (when there was nothing beachy about the weather in NH). 

I'm going to begin my chain with another book set in a beach house. Poet Cynthia Huntington's memoir (1) The Salt House is about a long summer stay on Cape Code. It is beautifully written and thoughtful and celebrates both the landscape and the feeling of the place. 

Continuing with the theme of retreating to a beach house to figure stuff out my next book is (2) A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson. This book is about a year when Anderson retreated to a beach-side cottage to sort things out and is a quiet meditation on how Anderson sees herself fitting into the world and whether it is working for her. Another title I enjoyed which addressed those same themes is (3) Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment by Katrina Kenison. 

Retreating from the world to figure out where you go next is also the subject of Ruth Reichl's beautiful book (4) My Kitchen Year: 365 Recipes that Saved My Life. The idea that you can cook your way to clarity about your world is also a large part of what makes  (5) Midnight Chicken and Other Recipes Worth Living For by Ella Risbridger  a wonderful book. 

All of these books (including Beach Read) focus on women who have retreated from the world to some degree in order to reassess the direction of their lives. I am going to complete my chain with a novel that seems to me to be the quintessential work on this theme: (6) The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. 

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Wintering by Katherine May which I began but did not finish. The topic sounded really interesting to me, but I found the author's experiences did not resonate with me at all. It was not a book for me. 

I'm going to begin my chain this time with a book that was for me: (1) The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was a huge fan of these books as a kid. I got the next one in the series each Christmas from my Grandma throughout elementary school and still have a lovely matching set of these books. 

Continuing along the path of seasonal books from my youth when I was in high school my Mom recommended (2) Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly to me. I read it and really liked it, and it has stuck with me (more as a feeling than the details) ever since. Crossing from summer to winter is a major element in (3) Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett so I am using that title to transition back to winter and another recommendation from my Mom. She told me repeatedly that I should read the work of Rosamunde Pilcher which I did not do until fairly recently when I read (4) Winter Solstice. I loved this book and should have listened to my Mom sooner. 

A totally different kind of book with winter in the title, and which I also enjoyed, is (5) If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. This is a book about reading a book and is extremely clever. Another book that breaks the fourth wall in a similar way is (6) The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles.

Sorry there is no picture on this post. Phixr, which I have used and loved for years to create images for my blog closed up shop and I haven't found a replacement tool yet. Suggestions welcome!

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason which I haven't read.

"This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her but she doesn't know what it is." (from the Goodreads blurb)

That description reminded me of Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christie Tate, but I have used that book in a previous #6degrees post so I am going a different direction and starting with a book with a similarly structured title to the inspiration book: (1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen which is (among other things) a comedy of manners set in Regency England. This leads me to (2) Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym which focuses on the foibles of 20th century middle-class English life and the quest for a suitable mate. That is, Jane is on a quest for a suitable mate for Prudence and she finds that matchmaking has its pitfalls. Perhaps she should have taken matchmaking lessons from (3) The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer. That novel is one of Heyer's many (many!) Regency romances, but I first discovered her as a mystery writer when I read (4) Why Shoot a Butler? Written in the early 1930s this novel is set in an English country house and is a murder mystery centering on a family with a lot of secrets. This leads me directly to (5) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie's debut novel which ticked all the same boxes a decade before Heyer's book was published. The final link in my chain is a novel that offers an explanation of Agatha's Christie's famous disappearance, (6) The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict. It is a very good novel with a believable explanation of what went on, but personally I think the correct explanation for Christie's disappearance is the one offered in the Dr. Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp." Benedict's novel focuses on the marriage of the Christies so that seems like a good connection back to the original book which I think focuses on a struggling marriage as well.

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey. I haven't read this novel, but I understand that it is a man writing his life story for his child. This is also the premise of one of my very favorite books so I will start with it: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. Among the many things that main character John Ames tells his son about in this novel is the history of their family which included an abolitionist grandfather who fought in Kansas. That history is also the backdrop to the novel (2) Bleeding Kansas by Sara Paretsky. Also referencing that history as a backdrop (though less directly) is (3) Kansas Troubles by Earlene Fowler which is #3 in the Benni Harper mystery series. All the Benni Harper books have a quilt named in the title and some connection to quilting in the story. Another series of quilting mysteries begins with (4) Forget Me Knot by Mary Marks. I haven't read this one yet, but one of my quilter friends has been devouring these so it is on my TBR. A series that I have binged on is The Elm Creek Quilts series by Jennifer Chiaverini, which is quilt-related, but isn't mysteries. My favorite one in the series (so far) is (5) Circle of Quilters. The novel (6) How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto also features a circle of quilters. Otto's novel includes two of my favorite quotes:

“Why are old lovers able to become friends? Two reasons. They never truly loved each other, or they love each other still.” 
“There are no rules you can follow. You have to go by instinct and you have to be brave.”

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. I haven't read this novel so I am going to begin my chain with another sea novel: (1) The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. This is the story of Antoinette Cosway, first wife of Edward Rochester (of Jane Eyre fame). I love books that take a famous story and look at it from another point of view. One of the best of these is (2) Wicked by Gregory Maguire which is the story of the wicked witch from (3) The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Another book about a wizard is (4) The Wizard of Earth Sea by Ursula K. LeGuin which tells the story of the great sorcerer Ged, who in his reckless youth was called Sparrowhawk. Another youth who comes to be known by a different name when he is grown is Wart, the main character in (5) The Once and Future King by T. H. White. His name when he grows up is King Arthur, and he is central to the story of (6) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. 

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I read this but I didn't like it as well as (1) Our Man in Havana which was the first Greene novel I had read. The next Graham Greene novel I plan to read is (2) The Quiet American. There is a movie version of this novel which stars Michael Caine. The book ended up on my TBR after I read (3) Blowing the Bloody Doors Off  which is Michael Caine's memoir. Another celebrity memoir I read recently was (4) Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. Like the Caine book it was an entertaining combination of memoir and self-help. I don't read a lot of memoir, but I am a big fan of biography. I like the more objective point-of-view that a biographer brings to their subject. Robert Caro wrote a book called (5) Working which is a fascinating look behind the curtain at how this Pulitzer-prize-winning biographer creates his books. There are quite a few biographies on my TBR list, but one of the next ones I plan to read is (6) The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene by the Canadian poet and biographer Richard Thomas Greene.

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. I have not read this novel, and it doesn't really sound like it would be something I would enjoy. I am going to make my first link using the idea of talking. Another book that I haven't read, but one that I will get to one of these days is We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. That novel is on my TBR list because I was absolutely blown away by Shriver's novel The Post-Birthday World. It is a what-if story about a woman and the two men that she might have spent her life loving. Another wonderful book that is a story created from alternate possibilities is My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. In this novel (Jhabvala's 18th) the author is the subject and a series of stories (with some of the same people appearing in them) shows alternative possibilities for how she might have lived her life. Some of those nine lives take place in India, as does The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy. This is a huge and sweeping story filled with horror and love, and the intimate struggles of facing each day as it comes. I wanted to read Roy's new book because I loved her first novel (published 20 years earlier), The God of Small Things. Another excellent novel set in India, though this one is in the very different world of British-occupied India, is A Passage to India by E. M. Forster. 

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. This amazing novel begins in a gallery where a photography exhibit is going on. Another of my favorite novels features a photography exhibit towards the end: The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. I also loved Makkai's novel The Hundred-Year House which is about family and is told through the lens of the family house. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett also uses a house as a way to frame the tale of a family. Bel Canto is a very different kind of novel--it focuses on a hostage situation in a South American country--and was my introduction to Patchett's work. Another novel with a South American setting (Columbia specifically) is Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I listened to this novel which was a good call because I think all the Spanish names would have been tough going for me but the audio version was beautiful and easy for me to follow. Another book that I enjoyed as an audiobook because it eliminated a language barrier for me is Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon. This is the first of her Guido Brunetti books and I have listened to most of them on audio which is a wonderful way to experience these fabulous mysteries set in Venice. It also has an opera theme which connects back to Bel Canto.

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. Goodreads describes this book as "the classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside." That is definitely not a book for me. I did read Wharton's House of Mirth. That book was not for me either as it was bleak and depressing. I have one more Edith Wharton novel on my to-be-read list: The Age of Innocence which is set in New York in the Gilded Age which is a period I find really interesting. 

A novel that I did really enjoy set in New York in this period is The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore. It is the story of a young lawyer in 1880s NYC who is defending George Westinghouse in a suit brought by Thomas Edison over the question of who invented the light bulb and thus owns the right to power the country. This work of historical fiction made me want to learn more about the actual case, so I have Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes on my TBR list. 

Another book on my TBR list about a nineteenth-century business battle is The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel. I find the history of businesses fascinating, especially big iconic businesses. One of the best behind-the-scenes-of-an-icon books I have read is Katharine Graham's memoir Personal History. Graham was the owner of the Washington Post during Watergate and in this book she explains how she became the woman who was strong and brave enough to take on the White House (my interpretation, not hers).

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with What Are You Going Through? by Sigrid Nunez. I have not read this book, I did check it out of the library but determined pretty quickly that it was not for me. The title reminded me of (1) Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb which was a wonderful book about a therapist whose life is falling apart and the patients she is trying to help. A similar book is (2) Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life by Christie Tate.  They are both good books; I personally found Gottleib easier to identify with than I did Tate. Moving away from the theme of professional help and toward caring for yourself brings me to the inspiring, yet practical, An Invitation to Self-Care (3) by Tracey Cleantis. If part of caring for yourself is finding a slower more thoughtful existence (4) World Enough and Time: On Creativity and Slowing Down by Christian McEwen will give you lots of ideas and inspiration for doing this. If you want a model to follow, (5) My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life by Ruth Reichl is basically a diary of Reichl healing her own spirit through quiet, seasonal cooking after losing her job at Gourmet Magazine. If you want to hear all the stories about being the editor of Gourmet then(6) Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl is the book you want.

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery. If you haven't read this story it is available on the New Yorker site. It is a story with a dark surprise at the end. Another book with a surprise at the end is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I knew the story of Rebecca first from the movie and later read the book. Another book that I read after seeing the movie (in this case many times) was Double Indemnity by James M. Cain. A train trip plays a major part in Cain's plot which leads me to another book where a train journey is the center of the story: The Edge by Dick Francis. That Dick Francis novel got onto my TBR list because I heard about it on the Strong Sense of Place podcast. Another book I read after hearing about it on SSoP was Under the Big Top by Bruce Feiler in which the author joins the circus for a year. I love books where someone decides to do something for a year and then tells the reader about how it went. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell is a classic of this genre and one of my favorites. Another great book where someone experiments on themselves and then tells us all about it is Living Oprah by Robin Okrant. She spends a year doing all the stuff that Oprah Winfrey recommends and it is fascinating.

  

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary.  I know about this series of books, but haven't actually read them. Despite missing this series, when I was young I certainly loved reading books about girls who were always making trouble. One of my favorites was Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. Another favorite troublemaking girl from my childhood reading is Eloise by Kay Thompson. That book was illustrated by Hilary Knight and the illustrations are what make a good kid's book totally fabulous. Hilary Knight also illustrated Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald. I absolutely LOVED the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books when I was in elementary school. I suspect Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is the kind of person those other delightful trouble-making girls will grow up to be. 

"Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle lives in an upside-down house and smells like cookies. She was even married to a pirate once." 

That fact brings me to a book about pretending to be a pirate: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales about the Making of the Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. While Elwes's book is the true story of making a movie, Fear in the Sunlight by Nicola Upson is a novel which takes place on the set of Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent. This novel is part of Upson's wonderful series based on the life of Josephine Tey. Among other things, Tey wrote A Shilling for Candles, the novel upon which the Hitchcock film in the Upson novel is based. 

  

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Redhead at the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler. I have only read one book by Anne Tyler, Vinegar Girl, so I am starting my chain with that. It is a retelling of "Taming of the Shrew" and is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series. Another book in that series is Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood's retelling of "The Tempest" which she sets in a prison. Another novel by Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, continues the chain.  It is a brilliant and complex novel which is told by a woman about her sister. Another novel where one sister narrates the life of another is My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite which was a great book. One of the threads of that story deals with the question of how much sisters can be expected to sacrifice for each other. Jodi Piccoult's My Sister's Keeper wrestles with the same question.I will wrap up this chain with another book about sisters and which also has a Shakespeare connection. Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown is a story about the daughters of a Shakespeare scholar who are sorting out the difficulties of being adults. It was not deep, but I definitely enjoyed it. 

6 Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray. I know that I read this in college, and I think I have a copy somewhere, but I really can't remember much about it. Perhaps it should be considered for a re-read at some point. It did remind me of (1) Vanity Fair's Writers on Writers which I got as a gift from my Mom at Christmas in 2016 and which I read a bunch of essays in, but not all and I need to get back to it. It includes an essay about Salman Rushdie. I have always wanted to read his work, but never managed to until this past year when I read (2) The Golden House. The narrator of Rushdie's novel is a film-maker who is trying to wrangle the sprawling story of the Golden family into a coherent narrative. William Boyd's (3) Sweet Caress is similar in that it is taking a visual medium (photography in that case) and using it as a narrative thread to tie a sprawling story into a coherent whole. Boyd uses various photos, presumably taken by his main character but actually found by the author at thrift stores, to illustrate his tale. Another book that mixes images into fiction as if they are documentary evidence is (4) Night Film by Marisha Pessl. Her first novel, (5) Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a book I picked up because I loved the title. Another book that I was drawn to because the title entertained me was (6) A Red Herring without Mustard by Alan Bradley. It is part of the Flavia de Luce series all of which (so far) have proven to be  delightful.  

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with The Outsiders by S E Hinton. I read this book as a kid and I liked it. My absolute favorite writer at the point in my life when I read The Outsiders was Paula Danziger who wrote (#1) Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? Danziger visited my school library when I was in 6th or 7th grade and I was so excited to meet her and have her sign my copy of one of her books. Since then I have gotten to meet lots of authors (one of the benefits of being a librarian) but mostly it isn't as exciting as exciting as it was the first time. A few years ago I met a teenager at an event where Jodi Picoult was speaking and she was super excited to meet Picoult because (#2) My Sister's Keeper was her very favorite book which is about a kid suing her parents. It was a huge thrill for me to meet (very briefly at a huge event) Katherine Paterson because she wrote (#3) Bridge to Terabithia which I loved as a kid even though it was SO SAD.  The ambition to be a great runner is part of that story, which brings me to (#4) What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. Running is not a topic I am interested in, but Murakami is fascinating no matter what he talks/writes about and this was a great audiobook. Neil Gaiman is another author who I will listen to an audiobook by no matter what the topic is because I could listen to that man read the phone book and be riveted. My favorite of his books is (#5) Stardust. He is my husband's favorite writer and he likes the short stories better than the novels and especially liked (#6) Smoke and Mirrors.

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with (#1) Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin. This book has been on my to-read list for quite a while but I haven't gotten to it yet. A book about the romantic trials of one city-dwelling gay man that I did read, and enjoyed, is (#2) Less by Andrew Sean Greer.  He also wrote(#3) The Story of a Marriage, published in 2008, which I was absolutely blown away by.  Another book that I was blown away by, and which is also about a marriage (among other things) is (#4) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. After Gilead Robinson published (#5) Home which is essentially a retelling of the events in Gilead from a different point of view. Another great book that retells a story from a second character's point of view is (#6) Wicked by Gregory McGuire.

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with (#1) Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. I read this book for a wonderful book group I was in when I lived in Washington, DC. The next book we read after that was (#2) The Archivist by Martha Cooley. The conflicted archivist theme leads me to (#3) The Archivist's Story by Travis Holland, which is set in Moscow, 1939 where a young archivist in the recesses of the infamous Lubyanka prison struggles with choices about what his duty is. Russia, and struggles to understand what reality is are at the center of  (#4) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Both the magical elements and the struggle to understand reality bring me to (#5) The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Toru Okada, the main character in Murakami's novel spends a lot of time sitting in the bottom of a well thinking about stuff (it is more interesting than it sounds). This made me think of (#6) The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley which is a stunning novel about the deepest mysteries of human nature.

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. 

Six Degrees of Separation

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

This month the chain begins with (#1) Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies. The structure of that novel reminded me of Into the Woods which was made into a very good movie in which Meryl Streep got most of the best songs. (I know, not a book.) Meryl Streep was also in the movie version of (#2) The Hours by Michael Cunningham. That novel was inspired by (#3) Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway which I loved so much I gave it a rare (for me) 5 star rating. I also gave 5 stars to (#4) Amor Towles Rules of Civility, which, like Mrs. Dalloway, focuses on the thoughts of one woman as she makes her way through the world. Also by Amor Towles I read the novel (#5) A Gentleman in Moscow which takes place almost entirely in a hotel. This leads me inexorably to one of my favorite picture books, (#6) Eloise by Kay Thompson, which is about a little girl who lives at the Plaza Hotel.