Tag: 6Degrees

#6Degrees of Separation: From The Road to The Storyteller

whatcathyreadnext11 Comments

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

9781509870639This month’s starting book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a book I’ve heard of but not read. I know it involves a father and son walking alone through a burned, post-apocalyptic America.  That seems way too sombre a route to follow (if you pardon the pun) in the current circumstances, so I’m taking a more literal approach for my first link.

A road features prominently in A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey, which was shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2019. The book features a couple who take part in the Redex trial, a motor race around Australia. Along the way, their navigator learns more about his aboriginal roots.

A growing awareness of the shocking treatment of aboriginal people also features in The Philosopher’s Daughters by Alison Booth in which two sisters, Harriet and Sarah, travel to the Australian outback at the end of the 19th century.

My Sister, Myself by Jill Treseder also involves two sisters, Katalin and Marika, who escape from Budapest to London in 1956 as Russian tanks brutally crush the revolution against the Communist regime.

Burning Cold by Lisa Lieberman is also set in Hungary in 1956. It involves the search by brother and sister, Gray and Cara, for a newly discovered member of their family – another brother, Zoltán – who has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution.

The disappearance of a family member is also the focus of The Missing Girl by Jenny Quintana. The book involves Anna’s search for the truth about what happened to her older sister, who went missing as a teenager thirty years before.

Finally, in The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan, Samir leaves the safety of his family’s adopted home in Germany to travel to Beirut in an attempt to find his missing father. His only clues are an old photo and the bedtime stories his father used to tell him.

Where did your chain take you this month?

A Long Way From HomeThe Philosophers DaughtersMy Sister MyselfBurning ColdThe Missing GirlThe_Storyteller_Cover

#6Degrees 6 Degrees of Separation: From Wolfe Island to El Hacho

whatcathyreadnext12 Comments

It’s the first Saturday of the month so 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 Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar a book I’d never heard of let alone read before seeing it mentioned here. However, I understand it concerns a woman living alone on the isolated island of the title until she is forced to flee with her granddaughter to escape some kind of threat.

Staying with wolves but travelling back to 9th century Anglo-Saxon England, Wolf of Wessex by Matthew Harffy also concerns a woman in peril and alone.  She joins forces with former warrior, Dunston, in the hunt for the perpetrators of a murder.

Thomas Hardy set all his novels, including Tess of the D’Urbevilles, in an area of South and Southwest England that he named Wessex, after the Anglo Saxon kingdom.

In ‘The Mezzotint‘ in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James, one of the characters remarks that the scene depicted in the mezzotint (a print made from an engraved copper or steel plate) resembles something out of a Hardy novel such as Tess of the D’Urbevilles. His colleague replies rather dismissively, “Yes, I dare say. It’s not a book I could ever read myself.”

The Visitor at Anningley Hall by Chris Thorndycroft is a prequel to ‘The Mezzotint’ in which the author goes behind the scenes of the picture to recount and enlarge upon the events eventually discovered in the original M. R. James story.

The Road to Grantchester by James Runcie is also a prequel, in this case to his historical crime series featuring priest, Sidney Chambers. In the first part of the book, Sidney is exposed to the harsh realities of war as he is caught up in the brutal WW2 Battle of Monte Cassino.

A battle of a different kind – this time against the elements – is the focus of El Hacho by Luis Carrasco. Olive farmer, Curro struggles to save his crops and his livelihood in the face of drought and flood.


Where did your chain take you this month?