Category: 6Degrees

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 #6Degrees 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 X using the hashtag #6Degrees.

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This month’s starting book is I Want Everything by Dominic Amerena. As is often the case it’s a book I haven’t read but the description of it as ‘a delightful literary puzzle‘ makes me think I might enjoy it. Links from each title will take you to my review .

According to the blurb I Want Everything features a novelist who suddenly disappears after a legal scandal concerning plagiarism. This provided me with inspiration for my first link, The Predicament by William Boyd, in which reluctant spy and travel writer Gabriel Dax is also accused of plagiarism.

Gabriel is sent on a mission to West Berlin just prior to President J F Kennedy’s visit in June 1963. Part of Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton is also set in West Berlin in June 1963 with its hero, Joe Holderness, making a return visit to the city he first visited in 1946. During his time there he was involved in smuggling coffee and other black market items.

Illicit goods are also the subject of Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie. It’s set in 1943 on the fictional Hebridean islands of Great and Little Todday where – disaster – the whisky has run out. Then a cargo ship full of whisky is shipwrecked off one of the islands. It’s based on a true story, the ship in question being the S.S. Cabinet Minister.

Politician turned author Alan Johnson served as a Cabinet Minister in the UK government from 2009 to 2011. His latest book is a biography of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Wilson’s relationship with his Political Secretary, Marcia Williams, was the subject of much speculation during his time in government although she successfully sued the BBC for libel over a claim that she and Wilson had an affair.

The true story of the close relationship between another British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and a young socialite, Venetia Stanley, with whom he recklessly shared secret documents, is the subject of Precipice by Robert Harris.

Another Prime Minister involved in scandal is the focus of Green Ink by Stephen May, also based on fact. This time it’s David Lloyd George who, as well as carrying on an affair, is fearful his involvement in selling public honours is about to be revealed.

My chain has featured dubious activities in different walks of life. Where did your chain take you?

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 #6Degrees 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 X using the hashtag #6Degrees.

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This month’s starting book is Ghost Cities by Siang Lu, winner of The Miles Franklin Literary Award 2025, a literary prize awarded annually to “a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases”. As is often the case, it’s a book I haven’t read. Links from each title will take you to my review .

The blurb states Ghost Cities is inspired by ‘the vacant, uninhabited megacities of China’. This provided me with inspiration for my first link – Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn, a nonfiction book also about abandoned places – ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim them.

Continuing the theme of abandoned places, historical novel The Lost Lights of St Kilda by Elisabeth Gifford is set on the remote Scottish island group of St. Kilda whose few remaining inhabitants were evacuated to the mainland in 1930 when life there became untenable.

Clear by Carys Davies is also set on a remote Scottish island now inhabited by one man, its last remaining occupant. The landowner wants to evict him in order to turn the island into grazing land for sheep.

The need to abandon your homeland also features in Exit West by Mohsin Hamid which tells the story of two young people forced to flee the war-torn city in which they live and seek safety in another country.

From west I’m heading north to North Woods by Daniel Mason. Set around a single house deep in the woods of New England, the book relates the stories of the various people who have occupied and then abandoned the house over the centuries.

Shelter by Sarah Franklin is also set in a forest, the Forest of Dean in WW2. Connie has joined the Women’s Timber Corps to escape bombed out of Coventry whilst Seppe has found a degree of safety even though confined in a Prisoner of War camp.

My chain has taken me from abandoned cities to a place of refuge. Where did your chain take you?