Six Degrees of Separation: From Passages to Industrial Roots

It’s March. I’ve had a couple of months off from Six Degrees of Separation, but this month’s starting book made me think about my mum’s bookshelves in the late 1970s and I decided to join in again.

Six Degrees of Separation is the book meme hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite And Best where we start with the same book and then create a chain of six books that link to the one before. Sometimes kismet allows you to link all of the books to each other, but it’s okay if it doesn’t. You don’t have to have read any of the books in the chain, either. Which is handy for me because I’ve rarely read Kate’s starting book.

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Reading Challenge Update

First up is an update on how I did with my 10 Books of Summer reading list. 20 Books of Summer is an annual challenge hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. This is the third year I’ve taken part, and once again I’ve managed to knock a few books off my To Read pile.

This year, 130 people signed up to the challenge. Cathy posted recently about how she’d done, which reminded me to do the same.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Sorrow and Bliss to How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

From the posts in my WP Reader, I see it’s time for Six Degrees of Separation, the book meme hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

I have lost track of the days because Britain is in the middle of an extended weekend that started on Thursday with a reallocated Bank Holiday Monday, moved through a Bank Holiday Friday that felt like Sunday, and now it’s anyone’s guess what day it is.

It is the first Saturday of the month, though. Really.

For our starting book this month, Kate has chosen Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason.

I haven’t read Mason’s debut, so genned up on it by reading a review. I now want to read it.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Second Place to Unreliable Memoirs

September already and time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

This year’s Booker Prize shortlist is announced in a couple of weeks. Kate’s choice of starting book, Second Place by Rachel Cusk, is on the longlist. I wonder if it will go the distance.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Bass Rock to The Lowland

Hello June, here so soon. I’m a day late for this month’s Six Degrees of Separation because summer arrived in Manchester this week and yesterday was too glorious to pass up the chance to read in the garden. Kate, who hosts the meme at Books Are My Favourite and Best, has chosen the Stella Prize winning book The Bass Rock for the first book in the chain.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Phosphorescence to The Dark Lady of DNA

Yesterday was the first Saturday of March and I really couldn’t think of how to get my Six Degrees of Separation chain started. This month, meme host Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best has chosen Phosphorescence by Julia Baird as our starting book.

Six Degrees of Separation: from Redhead by the Side of the Road to Snow Crash

February is six days old, and here’s the first Saturday of the month and Six Degrees of Separation. Check out the meme hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best if you want to join in. This month, in a return to normal things, we’re starting with a book I haven’t read, Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road.

Shōgun

Read 23/12/2020-06/02/2021

Rating 4 stars

James Clavell’s Shōgun was published in 1975. Five years later, it was adapted into a television mini-series starring Richard Chamberlain, which I was allowed to stay up past bedtime to watch. Ten years after that, the novel reached 15 million sales worldwide. It’s a true blockbuster novel. I hadn’t read the book until my friend Lisa lent me her copy, a well-read 1982 edition she picked up on the pound shelf at the local superstore. When I started reading it, it felt like pure escapism. There came a point, though, during my reading, when real world events made me reflect on the way human nature doesn’t change, our political systems behind their veneers of democracy are still feudal at heart, and to live through interesting times makes you fodder for future historical fiction. Shōgun is still a cracking yarn, though.

Stasiland

Read 15/11/2020-23/11/2020

Rating 5 stars

Stasiland has the subtitle Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall. In it, Anna Funder shares the experiences of a number of East Germans to build a picture of life under an oppressive regime. Her interviewees range from people who tried to escape, people separated arbitrarily from family overnight, and people who worked for the Stasi. There are amazing people between these pages who survived unimaginable horrors, and there are also the people who supported the use of those horrors. I found it a very moving book.

The Good People

Read 29/03/2020-05/04/2020

Rating 5 stars

I chose Hannah Kent’s The Good People for my next read because it seemed like the direct opposite of The Book of Strange New Things. Set in rural Ireland in the heart of Munster, it’s the story of a small community of farmers. The year is 1825. Life is hard. For Nóra Leahy it gets harder still.