Tag: 6Degrees

#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Prophet Song by Paul Lynch to James by Percival Everett

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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.

Front cover of Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

This month’s starting book is Prophet Song by Paul Lynch which won the Booker Prize in 2023. It’s a book I haven’t read but is on my wishlist. Links from each title in the chain will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

My first link is rather literal, but I hope not blasphemous, involving the name of a prophet from the Bible – Gideon. Gideon’s Day by J. J. Marric (the pseudonym of crime writer John Creasey) chronicles a day in the life of Detective Superintendent George Gideon of Scotland Yard during which he deals with various cases including alleged bribery, a robbery and a murder.

Gideon’s Day was made into a film starring Jack Hawkins who also took the leading role in the film adaptation of the novel The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Montsarrat. It’s set on board a small warship, HMS Compass Rose, tasked with escorting convoys across the Atlantic Ocean in World War Two.

Another book which features life aboard a ship during WW2 is Splinter on the Tide by Philip Parotti. Naval reservist Ash Miller is given command of a 110-foot wooden ‘submarine chaser’ tasked with protecting merchant ships from attack by German U-boats along the US Atlantic coast.

Another small boat features in The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor, based on a true story. Its 1940 and Alice King is escorting a group of children to Canada when a Nazi U-boat torpedoes their ship, the S.S. Carlisle, leaving a single lifeboat adrift in the storm-tossed Atlantic.

In How to Build A Boat by Elaine Feeny, 13-year-old Jamie is persuaded that building a boat is more practical than the perpetual motion machine he wanted to construct in an effort to connect with his mother who died when he was born.

Boatbuilding would be a useful skill for Huck and escaped slave, Jim, as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft in James by Percival Everett, the author’s re-imagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 taking us full circle to the starting book.

My chain has taken me from dystopian Ireland to the Mississippi River. Where did your chain take you?

The Cruel Sea

#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos to Flush by Virginia Woolf

whatcathyreadnext9 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 #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.

This month’s starting book is a classic novel, Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Once again a novel I haven’t read. Described as ‘a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society’ it was made into a film starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich as the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont respectively.

Links from each title in the chain will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

Dangerous Liaisons was published in 1782, seven years before the start of the French Revolution. My first link is to a novel set during the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. (I’m afraid this is a book I set aside unfinished.)

Hilary Mantel’s short story collection entitled The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher was published in 2014. In the story that gives the collection its title, the narrator imagines the assassination of the then Prime Minister. Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll concerns the actual attempt by the IRA to kill Margaret Thatcher during the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in 1984.

In Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, set in the murky underworld of 1930s Brighton, seventeen year-old gang leader Pinkie Brown takes revenge on a reporter whose story has led to the death of the gang’s former leader.

Richard Attenborough played the role of Pinkie in the 1948 adaptation of Brighton Rock. He directed the 1977 film version of the book A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan about Operation Market Garden, an Allied operation in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II aimed at seizing control of a number of bridges over the Rhine. In the film, Dirk Bogarde portrays Lieutenant General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, one of the senior officers in charge of the operation.

Browning was the husband of the writer Daphne du Maurier. Du Maurier’s biographer Margaret Forster was the author of Lady’s Maid in which a young woman arrives in London to become personal maid to the ailing, housebound Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Flush by Virginia Woolf is a charming story told from the point of view of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel.

My chain has taken me from 18th France to 19th century London. Where did your chain take you?