Tag: books

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

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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.

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?

#WWWWednesday – 29th January 2025

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Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you’ll read next?

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

Currently reading

The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)

Front cover of The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O'Connor

February 1944. Six months since Nazi forces occupied Rome.

Inside the beleaguered city, the Contessa Giovanna Landini is a member of the band of Escape Line activists known as ‘The Choir’. Their mission is to smuggle refugees to safety and help Allied soldiers, all under the nose of Gestapo boss Paul Hauptmann.

During a ferocious morning air raid a mysterious parachutist lands in Rome and disappears into the backstreets. Is he an ally or an imposter? His fate will come to put the whole Escape Line at risk.

Meanwhile, Hauptmann’s attention has landed on the Contessa. As his fascination grows, she is pulled into a dangerous game with him – one where the consequences could be lethal.

The Ghosts of Paris (Billie Walker Mystery #2) by Tara Moss (Verve Books) 

It’s 1947. The world continues to grapple with the fallout of the Second World War, and former war reporter Billie Walker is finding her feet as an investigator.

When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to London and Paris, where Billie’s own painful memories also lurk. Jack Rake, Billie’s wartime lover and, briefly, husband, is just one of the millions of people who went missing in Europe during the war. What was his fate after they left Paris together?

As Billie’s search for her client’s husband takes her to both the swanky bars at Paris’s famous Ritz hotel and to the dank basements of the infamous Paris morgue, she’ll need to keep her gun at the ready, because something even more terrible than a few painful memories might be following her around the City of Lights…

Recently finished

The House With Nine Locks by Philip Gray (Harvill Secker)

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (Penguin)

The Endeavour of Elsie Mackay by Flora Johnston (eARC, Allison & Busby via NetGalley)

What Cathy Will Read Next

A Cold Wind From Moscow by Rory Clements (Zaffre) 

Winter, 1947. Britain’s secret services have been penetrated. The country is more vulnerable than ever – and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin knows it. He decides it is time to send his master of ‘Special Tasks’ to create extra chaos.

But Stalin has a more important motive than mere disruption. He has a man on the inside who must be protected at all costs – a communist super-spy who has the secrets of the atomic bomb at his fingertips.

Freya Bentall, a senior MI5 officer, no longer knows who to trust and is left with one to bring in an outsider whose loyalty is beyond question – Cambridge professor Tom Wilde. His task: to find the traitor in MI5.

Bentall has three main suspects and Wilde must get close to them all. That means delving deep into the criminal underworld, attaching himself to the cultural elite of the arts and finding a way into the extreme reaches of British politics.

As winter bites and violence erupts, Wilde faces an uphill battle to protect those he loves from merciless killers. And he knows that one slip will spell disaster for the country – and his family.