#6Degrees July 2017

#6degrees is a monthly meme hosted by Kate @Books Are My Favourite and Best.

Oftentimes I haven't read the starting book for this meme, but I can assure you that I only play the next 6 books with ones I have actually read. 

If I've read the book during this blogging life, then I include my review, otherwise, you just have to take my word for it!

This month the starting book is Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.

Are you game?

Old image alert - Kate @Books Are My Favourite & Best now hosts #6Degrees but this is a good refresh of the rules.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is one of my favourite Australian stories. It's a story that hinges on a pivotal, climactic picnic scene.

Another literary picnic that is a major turning, is the one in E M Forster's A Room With A View where George shouts his love for Lucy and beauty in a field near Florence.
The story is full of torturous social dilemma's and class conflict. But English society was not the only one to suffer these problems.

New York society in the mid to late 1800's proved to be fertile ground for Edith Wharton and her Age of Innocence (coincidentally, the movies of both these books starred Daniel Day Lewis).
Age of Innocence also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1921.

In 1925 another female writer, Edna Ferber, won the Pulitzer Prize for her now almost forgotten best seller, So Big. It was such a pleasant surprise that I'm not going to say anything else about it, because I want you to discover it for yourself. Suffice to say, So Big was so good!

Another forgotten classic that has been recently rediscovered is Stoner by John Williams. I have yet to read this book, but it is waiting patiently for my attention on my rather extensive TBR pile.

Stoner features an existential hero which leads me nicely back to Bilbo Baggins and The Hobbit.
All roads lead to Middle Earth this year as I continue my leisurely #HLOTRreadalong.
The Hobbit is also the quintessential road trip story.

The very first road trip story ever recorded was told by Homer in The Odyssey.
After twenty years of warfare and wandering the world Odysseus finally returns home.
A home that has changed and moved on during his time away, but home nonetheless.

I've travelled from an Australian rural picnic through the social minefields of English and New York society, with a detour via rural America, Middle Earth to end on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Where did you end up this month?

#6degrees