#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Tom Lake to Rogue Male

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation.

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

This month’s starting book is Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Once again, it’s a book I haven’t read but it is on my wishlist. Links from each title will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

Picking up the second word of title, my first link is to The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting set in 19th century Norway. (Mytting’s non-fiction book, Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way, was a perhaps unlikely sounding bestseller.)

Also set in Norway, but more than two hundred years earlier, is The Witches of Vardø by Anya Bergman. Set in an isolated fishing community, it’s the story of a grieving widow who is sent to the grim fortress at Vardø to be tried for witchcraft.

Staying in the 17th century and accusations of witchcraft, in Witch Wood by John Buchan moderate young Presbyterian minister, David Sempill, finds himself up against religious extremists who show no mercy as they search for evidence of witchcraft and demonic possession in the Scottish village of Woodilee.

Buchan’s autobiography, Memory Hold-The-Door, was reputedly John F. Kennedy’s favourite book. In 11/23/63 by Stephen King, an English teacher from Maine, travels back in time on a mission to prevent Kennedy’s assassination.

An assassination attempt – this time on President de Gaulle – is the subject of The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth.

In Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, an unnamed Englishman plans to assassinate the dictator of a European country whose identity, although not stated, isn’t hard to guess given the book was published in 1939.

My chain has taken me from present day Michigan to pre-WW2 Europe. Where did your chain take you this month?