#6degrees January

#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 The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles.

Are you game?

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

Starting a brand new year discussing one of my favourite books feels promising.
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a book I read and loved many, many years ago. I was inspired by it to visit Lyme Regis on my last trip to the UK in 2007. So I will take the easy and obvious connection here and pick Jane Austen's Persuasion as my next link in the chain.

One of the key episodes in Persuasion also occurs in Lyme Regis, when Louisa Musgrove falls down the steps of the Cobb. This action changes the course of the story not only for Louisa, but several of the other key players as well.

Katy's fall off a swing in What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge also had dramatic, life-changing consequences for Katy.

As a child I was fascinated by this story of chance and adversity. It also spawned a couple of follow-up books, What Katy Did at School and What Katy Did Next. Even as a child I was concerned by the gender stereotyping and prescriptive behaviours promoted in these books. As a modern, young feminist 70's kid, I was grateful to be living in such enlightened times!
It was in part, the restrictive dresses and clothing worn by the characters in many of my favourite childhood classics, that influenced me in my decision to not wear dresses in my everyday life (except for compulsory school uniforms) from the age of 8 to about 30!

The waste of time and pain of looking after long hair was another childhood fixation that I've never really outgrown. Which is why I adore the scene in Little Women when Jo cuts off all her hair. I always wished that she had embraced the freedom of her new style and kept it short from then on.

The best short, pixie-style, haircut ever, belongs not to a book character, but to a fictional TV character. This may not strictly be within the rules of the meme, but any chance to revisit my love for Janine Turner's hairstyle in Northern Exposure is worth breaking a few rules for!

Which then also allows me to jump easily and naturally into Alaska with Eowyn Ivey's To the Bright Edge of the World. Her fascinating, moving and slightly magical story blends fact and fiction about the early exploration of the Alaskan landscape.

One of the curious facts that captured my imagination at the time, though, was Eowyn's name. Her parents were fans of Lord of the Rings and named her after one of Tolkien's main female characters. Fortunately, they didn't have a boy - Bilbo would be a hard name to live up to!

Today I've travelled from Lyme Regis to Ohio and Massachusetts, through Alaska and all the way to Middle Earth to bring you my six degrees of separation! Accidents, women's issues and baby names were my main links.
Where did you end up?

#6degrees December

#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 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Are you game?

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

A Christmas Carol?

Where do we go after that?

Do we follow the seasonal story path or the famous author road?

Perhaps I could choose another story about redemption or kindness?

Too easy! I cry rashly!

Instead I will follow the ghost story element - straight into the arms of Audrey Niffenegger and Her Fearful Symmetry.

Now I could simply pick another book about twins as my next link.
Too easy! I cry rashly!
Did you know that the title of Her Fearful Symmetry was based on a poem by William Blake?
It is and I'm sure there are oodles of books out there based on or named after famous lines in poems, but the stand out based-on-poetry story for me is Steven Carroll's The Lost Life.

I adored everything about this story - the language, the love and the poem.
However the other two books in the proposed quartet haven't grabbed me quite as much.
I'm still hopeful for the fourth.

Which is a similar experience that I had with the Elena Ferrante tetralogy.
The first book was intriguing, but I struggled to finish the set.
My energy and care factor fizzled out.

Sadly I also failed to care about or connect to Lorena Hickok in Amy Bloom's White Houses (review to come shortly).
I wanted to, but I felt like I was kept at arms length the whole time.

My next leap combines several links from the books above.
The Monkey's Mask by Dorothy Porter includes a degree of poetry, LGBTQ and glorious language.
It also still haunts me to this day.

So my final link is to another book/author that also continues to haunt/obsess me years after reading her.
Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber really got under my skin.
I dreamt about her stories and 'researched the shit out of' each and every one (thank you Matt Damon & The Martian).

Who would have though way back there at the beginning of this post, that A Christmas Carol would end with us being marooned on Mars with Matt Damon!
From ghosts to twins, poems to tetralogy's, lesbians to fairy tales, with a final nod to popular movie culture (& one of my most used in real life movie quotes), we have another exciting month of #6degrees.

Where did you end up this month?

#6degrees November

#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 Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray..

Are you game?

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

I think I started readng Vanity Fair in my early twenties, but I'm not sure I finished it.
I was inspired to give it a go by the BBC production doing the rounds at the time starring Eve Matheson.
I enjoyed the TV series but found the book a bit long-winded.

This is not the first time a TV series or movie has encouraged me to try a book that I may not have otherwise tackled.
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad seemed too dark and too naval to attract my readerly attention, but then one rainy Sunday afternoon in my late twenties, I decided to watch the 1965 movie starring Peter O'Toole.
The book followed not long after.

A few years later, when I read a rave review about Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series, I didn't dismiss it outright.
Lord Jim showed me I could read a story with a naval setting and even enjoy it.
I loved the first Master and Commander book so much, I went on to read all 21 books in the series...and watch the Russell Crowe movie when it came out in 2003.
 Although I'm still not sure I can explain the difference between a jib and a mainsail!

Another series that I've read every single book all the way through to the bitter end, was the Anne of Green Gables books by L.M. Montgomery.
I say the bitter end, because as with any long standing series, some of the titles were better than others.

Which has certainly been my experience of the Maisie Dobbs series.
The 14th book in this mostly delightful cosy crime series set between the wars in London, has just been published this year.
Winspear nearly lost her way a few books ago, when she finally allowed Maisie to fall in love.
The love story nearly killed her series.
Drastic action was required - main characters were killed off and a time jump occurred to give this series fresh blood.

Speaking of time jumps, the book that used the time jump effect to perfection was The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
Being able to go back in time to 1980's Detroit to see a Violent Femmes concert sounds like a good use of one's ability to travel in time!

Although Stephen King fans might dispute this, claiming that being able to go back to 1963 to prevent the assassination of JFK is a worthier use of time travel.
However 11/22/63 showed us that changing history has it's own consequences.

I started in 1847 England, travelled via sea to Prince Edward Island, London and a Violent Femmes concert, to finish up in 1963 on the trail of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Where did you end up?

Next month (December 1, 2018), we’ll begin with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

#6degrees October

#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 The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.

Are you game?

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

The Outsiders is one of those coming-of-age stories that I never got around to reading during my own coming-of-age stage or at any other stage of my life.
So I will have to stick with this one well-known fact about The Outsiders to get me to the next link on my chain.

A more recent version of a bildungsroman (I love any chance to use that fabulous German word) is
Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.
It follows a group of high school friends through the eyes of a naive, younger narrator.

Hopefully they won't grow up to be like the friends in The Secret History by Donna Tartt!

A number of my bookshop colleagues had been raving about this book for years - they couldn't believe that I hadn't read it.
On a holiday to the Mornington Peninsula a number of years ago, I spotted a copy in a second hand bookshop.
It was a fun, lazing by the side of the pool kind of read, but ultimately left me scratching my head, wondering what all the fuss was about.

Another secondhand bookshop find that has proved to be more of a genuine and long-lasting thrill was Australian Classics by Jane Gleeson-White (especially because it is now out of print).

I thought I'd done a pretty good job, over the years, of reading many of the fabulous Australian classics - until I read this book.
I now have a list of Aussie must-reads to get through.

Another recent read that left me with a long list of books to read was Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air.

This was Kalanithi's search for meaning, understanding and connection in the face of death.
How we approach the end of life with dignity and individual choice is the main discussion in Atul Gawande's Being Mortal.

This was an incredibly moving and thought provoking book and reminded me why I love non-fiction so much.
It can open up a world of thought and ideas that you could otherwise dismiss, miss or ignore.

Since I've been on a medical jag with this months #6degrees I will finish with another medical memoir that I could have easily dismissed as not being of any concern of mine.

Avalanche was one woman's discussion about the IVF journey she and her partner went on.
It was quite a harrowing read, and for me, a searing indictment on the IVF industry taking advantage of cashed-up vulnerable people.

October has been a circle of life #6degrees for me, starting with coming-of-age stories through to end of life before cycling back to the very start of our life story.

Where did your links take you this month?

#6degrees August

#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 Atonement by Ian McEwan.

Are you game?

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

I've been a somewhat sporadic player of #6degrees lately for which I apologise.

I keep waiting for life to settle down and not be so busy, but I'm waiting in vain.

So I'm just going to go on squeezing as much as I can into each day; the quiet life can wait!

Every now and again, though, something falls off the radar.

Memes and visiting & commenting on other blogs is usually the first thing to go, followed quickly by mopping the floor!
However, the floor is now mopped, so I guess it must be time to play.

Back when I read Atonement, I thought Ian McEwan could do no wrong.
But my opinion of him has become more complicated since then.
So it was with some reluctance that I picked up his 70th birthday short story, My Purple Scented Novel. 

Fortunately, it turned out to be a right little treat, full of all the moral ambiguity and literary mocking that one has come to expect and enjoy from McEwan. 

If I was clever (which I feel very far from this morning!) I would link to another book full of moral ambiguity or literary mocking, but I'm going with purple instead.

The Color Purple was one of those books that I came to thanks to the movie. 

I was stunned by the emotional journey the movie took me on, and was curious to see if the book could do the same.

And of course it did, and then some.

I don't cry out loud very often in books, but The Color Purple is one that had me sobbing tears of joy and relief at the end.

In fact, I can only think of two other books that have me cry out loud (tearing up is another category altogether). 

One is the Aussie childhood classic, Seven Little Australians.

This is another book that I came to thanks to the ABC TV series from the 70's.

And again it's not the scenes of death and dying that make me cry, it's the end scenes of the family coping with their grief and loss that undo me completely.

Seven is a lot of kids, which reminds me of my recent foray into David Sedaris' world in Calypso.

He is one of six kids himself, so he had much to say about growing up in a large family.
I found the experience to be rather like reading a McEwan - hit and miss.
Except I will always give McEwan another chance because of Atonement; Sedaris, was more miss than hit, though, so he is off my schedule for good.

Also off my schedule is my next book club read.
Despite the lovely purple cover, Girls Burn Brighter by Shobha Rao is a tough read according to all the reviews (on Goodreads) that I've read.

Everyone mentioned how horrific and unrelenting the domestic violence was and how little hope there was for either of the friends by the end of the book.

I choose not to watch violent movies and I don't read violent books.
The few that have snuck past my radar have haunted me ever since.
 I do not want to become habitualised to them either.

One that did sneak under the radar was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

I can't believe it's three years since I read this.

Jude's story still lives large in my memory and some of the things that happened to him will be seared into my brain forever.

A rather difficult journey this month through some tough emotional terrain!

How did you fair?

The September starter book is Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson.
In case you were wondering who? what? like I was, Mara was the gorgeous young child actor from the movie Mrs Doubtfire.

#6degrees

#6degrees June

#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 The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

Are you game?

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

The Tipping Point is a book I know about, but not one I've read.

The best link I could think of was thanks to the tag about little things on the front cover.
I automatically started humming Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly's song, From Little Things Big Things Grow.

The song was turned into a picture book a number of years ago with illustrations by Queensland artist Peter Hudson and the kids from Gurindji country.

Another book inspired by a song is Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.
One of the characters is obviously a huge Beatles fan.

Essentially Norwegian Wood  is a nostalgic coming of age story about lost love and lyrics.

The logical place to go after that is Nick Hornby and High Fidelity.

Although sadly, this is one of the few times when I preferred the movie over the book.

The movie had a killer soundtrack...and John Cusack.

Say no more!

Cusack also played a role in another book-to-movie classic, Stephen King's The Body, which became Stand By Me at the movies.

The Body is a short story in King's Different Seasons collection.

I love short story collections.
One of my favourite short story writers is William Trevor.
His brick of short stories is one of the most brilliant pieces of story-telling I've ever read.

Sadly he died in 2016, along with a slew of other well-known authors.
Including Richard Adams.
Watership Down was one of my favourite childhood reads.
The rabbits in this story are a perfect literary example of how little things can make a big difference.

And so we go back to The Tipping Point.

For the first time, in #6degrees history, I have created a loop rather than a chain.
How did you fare this month?
By the by, it's 14℃ outside, but feels like 11.
Which is better than #6degrees (see what I did there?)
Winter has arrived with a vengeance!

#6degrees May

#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 Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Are you game?

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

Poisonwood Bible is one of those books that had so much hype when it first came that it actually put me off reading it. I still haven't gone there. Perhaps I will change my mind after reading your responses?

Which leads me nicely to another over-hyped, over-anticiapated book that I never read - Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The first page just made me want to puke!

So it was with great trepidation that I picked up Gilbert's novel, The Signature of All Things a few years ago. Yes, it was historical fiction, one of my favourite genres, but it was by the same person who wrote Eat Pray Love!
Could I go really there?

Yes I did!
And I'm so glad I did.
I learnt that a writer can be two very different people - as someone who writes historical fiction Gilbert was fabulous, but as a writer of biography/memoir, she's not my cup of tea at all.

I had a similar experience with one of my favourite Australian writers recently.
Alex Miller has written some wonderful contemporary and historical fiction stories, but his recent fictionalised memoir ended up by a big, fat DNF!
The Passage of Love did not work for me at all.

A fictionalised memoir/biography that I did enjoy, although it attracted a lot of controversy at the time is, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.

Stegner not only fictionalised his own history, he also merged it into a fictionalised account of the life and times of Mary Hallock Foote. The controversy lay in Stegner's failure to properly chronicle what was fact and what was fiction and whether or not he had permission to use Foote's diaries and letters as he did.
Despite this act of literary dishonesty, I have found the memory of Mary's engaging story lingering long after I finished it.

A much happier mix of fact and fiction is Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.

I ended up reading all of Tan's book on the strength of this wonderful book.
I love her mix of modern American life and historical fiction set in China.
And I love her women.
The mother/daughter dynamic was explored in all of her books and obviously reflected and helped her process her own internal journey.

Which brings me to Lily Brett and Too Many Men.

Brett's books spend a lot of time exploring the father/daughter relationship.
There's a lot to process.
Her parents are survivors of the Holocaust who immigrated to Australia after the war.
This was a beautiful, moving, tender yet funny story that made me cry.
Not many books do that.
It's a gem.

My #6degrees chain began with books that I don't like very much, if not at all and ended with some of my all-time favourites - a much nicer place to be.
How did you fare this month?

#6degrees April

#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 Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

Are you game?

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

I haven't been a very good player lately.
Each month seems to roll around faster than the last.
In my head I was still thinking of links for Room, until I realised last night that it had been and gone.
Apparently it's April already and our starting book is Memoirs of a Geisha!

Which is about as perfect as life gets right now!
I have not read Memoirs of a Geisha, but it is THE VERY book sitting on top of my TBR pile ready to come to Japan with me in just a few short weeks!

I could now simply pick 6 more books set in Japan and be done with it....but that would too easy!

I little research revealed that Golden was sued for breach of contract and defamation by one of the retired geisha's he interviewed for the book.
Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help faced a similar problem when her brother's maid sued for "an unpermitted appropriation of her name and image."

One of the reasons I took The Help on holidays with me (way back in my pre-blogging when) was for the pretty birds on the cover.
A shiny, pretty bird cover was also part of the attraction for picking Robyn Cadwallader's The Anchoress.

But the main reason I wanted to read The Anchoress was Cadwallader herself. 

I saw her talk at the Sydney Writer's Festival a few years ago and came away from it determined to read her book ASAP.

Another author that I was inspired to read thanks to her participation in the SWF, was Canadian author, Kim Thuy.

Ru was a beautiful, poetic story that was a delicious mix of fact and fiction.

Blurring the line between fact and fiction is something that Jeanette Winterson does so magnificently in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

My actually cover is the one in the middle of the bottom row, but I loved this montage of covers and I rather wish that my book was more like the one on the bottom right instead.

Cover love brings me to a more recent favourite.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar.

The cover is a collage of three of Azar's own paintings called The Poetry Night, Two Birds and Red Bird & Moon (more birds!)
Red bird and moon was all the prompt I needed to make my final link this month.

Okay, it's not exactly a moon, but the mockingjay is definitely red.
Well, red with a bit of orange, but oranges are not the only fruit, or colour, so let's leave it at that shall we!
And let's see what May brings us.
#6degrees

#6degrees February

#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 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Sauders.

Are you game?

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

I've been rather distracted and all over the place these past few months.
November & December flew by in a blur of grief and busyness.
I sat down to write a January #6degrees post but inspiration failed me completely.

I'm hoping that February will turn things around.

1. It's my birthday month
2. I'm turning 50
3. It's my party & I'll cry if I want to
4. I'm enjoying my first w/e at home for ages
5. A lovely cool change blew in to Sydney during the week
6. I've had my first Saturday morning sleep-in this year
7. Lincoln in the Bardo was one of my favourite books of 2017

So where to next?
Lincoln in the Bardo was a courageous choice for the Man Booker Prize judges.
Many people are still struggling with the whole international (i.e. American) nature of the prize now.
And Lincoln in the Bardo was not, and is not, a conventional book.
It's structure and format frustrates and annoys many readers.
I however loved it from start to finish.

I had the same response to an earlier Booker winner that played around with structure and format, that many readers also failed to warm to... The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton.

One of the things I loved about it was Catton's ability to evoke such a strong sense of place.
It would be easy to now jump to Tim Winton as being another writer who has that amazing ability to write about place with such power, but I'm going to take a step to the right and pick Robert Drewe instead. His memoir styled story, Shark Net, struck a huge chord with me, even though I did not grow in WA in the 1960's!

Madeleine St John's The Women in Black is about a young girl coming of age in Sydney during the late 1950's. Even though I did not grow up in Sydney during this time, I did visit Sydney a lot in the 70's. Sydney in the 70's was obviously not that different to Sydney in the 50's - I recognised pretty much everything that St John mentioned.

Reading stories that reflect your own life and your own experiences are important.
Perhaps readers in England, Europe and the US don't feel this as strongly, but it took quite some time for Australians to feel comfortable with their fellow Australians telling stories to and about us.
I could write post after post on the Cultural Cringe that infected our artistic life for so long.
My childhood was spent reading about children living in England and Northern America in particular. The first story that I remember reading, that was set in Australia, occurred during my teen years when I discovered Pastures of the Blue Crane by H. F. Brinsmead in my school library.

Reading a book that was set in an area that I knew so well was such a powerful validation of identity. It was the first time that I was consciously aware of a sense of belonging and pride for this country that I was born into. 

Pastures of the Blue Crane also was my first introduction to an Indigenous perspective in literature.

Since that time, I have read many more stories and texts by indigenous authors.

The most recent was Dark Emu Black Seeds by Bruce Pascoe.

Lots of important ideas and issues were raised and discussed by Pascoe in this book, but one that continues to play through my mind is the idea of 'to the victor goes the spoils.'

History is so often written by the 'winners' - those that hold the power and all the resources.

Stories from the perspective of minority groups and the less powerful are forgotten, discounted or ignored completely.

In an attempt to address this imbalance one my current non-fiction reads is Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India by Shashi Tharoor.

From a story about ghosts and letting go, we journeyed through sense of place and belonging, to a history populated with the ghosts of inglorious misdeeds. 

The trick, it would seem, after learning how to let go, is to move forward.

Which leads us to March #6degrees where our starting book will be The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.