Tag: memes

#6Degrees of Separation: From Wintering to On the Beach

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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 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.

WinteringThis month’s starting book is Wintering by Katherine May. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read but it’s a memoir which, according to the blurb, ‘teaches us to draw from the healing powers of the natural world and to embrace the winters of our own lives’.

Another memoir about the power of nature to aid both physical and mental recovery is Devorgilla Days by Kathleen Hart. Recuperating from treatment for breast cancer, the author moves to a small cottage in Wigtown, Scotland. She names the cottage ‘Devorgilla’ after a 13th century Scottish princess.

Devorgilla of Galloway was married to John, 5th Baron of Balliol who founded Balliol College, Oxford. One of its alumni was Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.

Elspeth Huxley, the wife of Aldous’s cousin, was the author of The Red Rock Wilderness in which a young Scotsman travels to Congo in search of a Nobel prize-winning biologist.

Elspeth was a friend of Joy Adamson, the author of Born Free, the story of how Adamson and her husband raised a lion cub (whom they named Elsa) in captivity and later returned her to the wild.

The actress Virginia McKenna played Joy Adamson in the film Born Free and also starred in the film adaptation of wartime drama A Town Like Alice based on the novel by Nevil Shute.

Another of Nevil Shute’s novels was made into a film, this time starring Gregory Peck. On the Beach, published in 1957, is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe.

My chain has taken us from a restorative winter to a nuclear winter by way of Africa and Australia. Where did your chain take you?

#WWWWednesday – 29th June 2022

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WWWWednesdays

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

Think of MeThink of Me by Frances Liardet (4th Estate)

1942, Alexandria, Egypt. Covered in dust, Yvette and James hold hands for the first time as bombs explode above them. As the war rages on, they will find their way back to each other time and again, their love a beacon for their survival. After the war, their happiness takes root in England and blossoms, until a tragic event drives a wedge between them. The way back to one another is uncharted territory that both must be brave enough to face.

1974. Ten years after his wife’s death and with his son now at university, James craves change. He moves to the beautiful English village of Upton not thirty minutes from the city where he brought his bride Yvette, nearly twenty-five years ago. There he discovers a scarf that lights the dark edges of his memory. Could it be Yvette’s? As James makes a new home for himself and gently presses into the feelings the scarf evokes, he begins to unlock new revelations about his past that change everything he believes. Revelations that just might give James a new reason to live and the possibility of new love at last, after ten years alone.

StorylandStoryland: A New Mythology of Britain by Amy Jeffs (riverrun)

Soaked in mist and old magic, Storyland is a new illustrated mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes.

It begins between the Creation and Noah’s Flood, follows the footsteps of the earliest generation of giants from an age when the children of Cain and the progeny of fallen angels walked the earth, to the founding of Britain, England, Wales and Scotland, the birth of Christ, the wars between Britons, Saxons and Vikings, and closes with the arrival of the Normans.

These are retellings of medieval tales of legend, landscape and the yearning to belong, inhabited with characters now half-remembered. Told with narrative flair, embellished in stunning artworks and glossed with a rich and erudite commentary.

We visit beautiful, sacred places that include prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge, mountains such as Snowdon and rivers including the story-silted Thames in a vivid collection of tales of a land steeped in myth.

Recently finished

Nothing Else by Louise Beech (Orenda Books)

Tomboy by Shelley Blanton-Stroud (She Writes Press)

The Sweetheart Locket by Jen Gilroy (Orion Dash)

 

What Cathy (will) Read Next

KatastropheKatastrophe by Graham Hurley (ARC, Head of Zeus)

Berlin, January 1945. Wherever you look on the map, the Thousand Year Reich is shrinking. Even Goebbels has run out of lies to sweeten the reckoning to come. An Allied victory is inevitable, but who will reap the spoils of war?

Two years ago, Werner Nehmann’s war came to an abrupt end in Stalingrad. With the city in ruins, the remains of General Paulus’ Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets, and Nehmann was taken captive. But now he’s riding on the back of one of Marshal Zhukov’s T-34 tanks, heading home with a message for the man who consigned him to the Stalingrad Cauldron.

Although the Red Army are about to fall on Berlin, Stalin fears his sometime allies are conspiring to deny him his prize. He needs to speak to Goebbels – and who better to broker the contact than Nehmann, Goebbels’ one-time confidant?

Having swapped the ruins of Stalingrad for the wreckage of Berlin, the influence of Goebbels for the machinations of Stalin, and Gulag rags for a Red Army uniform, Nehmann’s war has taken a turn for the worse. The Germans have a word for it: Katastrophe.