memes – Page 308 – What Cathy Read Next…

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 Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It’s a book I haven’t read but I know it’s a much-loved classic about a little boy called Max who puts on a wolf suit and has a series of imagined adventures.

It made me think of another children’s book that features wolves, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken. As well as being a prolific author of books for children, Joan Aiken also wrote The Haunting of Lamb House, a ghostly re-imagining of events in the house in the Kent village of Rye where Henry James lived for a time. It was also there that he wrote The Turn of the Screw.

The 1961 film version of The Turn of the Screw, released under the title The Innocents, starred Deborah Kerr as the governess to two children who becomes convinced the house and grounds are haunted. Deborah Kerr also starred in the 1955 film adaptation of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. Set during and shortly after the Second World War, it tells of the affair between a man and his friend’s wife.

Also set partly during the Second World War is Michael Ondaatje’s latest novel, Warlight, which was shortlisted for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (although it lost out to The Long Take by Robin Robertson). The ‘warlight’ of the title refers to the years when blackouts and curfews were in effect. This takes me to my final link – The Great Darkness by Jim Kelly. It’s a historical crime mystery set in Cambridge in the opening weeks of the Second World War, when the first blackout – the great darkness of the title – covers southern England.

So for this month’s Six Degrees we’ve travelled from dreams of wild things to very real dangers under cover of darkness.

Excitingly, next month (3rd August 2019), is a wild card – start with the book you’ve ended this month’s chain with (or for those playing for the first time, start with the last book you finished reading).

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

Hudson’s Kill (Justice Flanagan #2) by Paddy Hirsch (hardcover, advance review copy courtesy of Corvus and Readers First)

New York in 1803 is rife with tension as the city expands, and whoever knows where the city will build can control it. And violence builds as a mysterious provocateur pits the city’s black and Irish gangs against each other.

When a young black girl is found stabbed to death, both Justy Flanagan, now a City Marshal, and Kerry O’Toole, now a school teacher, decide separately to go after the killer. They each find their way to a shadowy community on the fringes of the growing city, where they uncover a craven political conspiracy bound up with a criminal enterprise that is stunning in its depravity.

Justy and Kerry have to fight to save themselves and the city, and only then can they bring the girl’s killer to justice.

The Dinner List by Rebecca Serle (paperback, courtesy of Readers First)

“We’ve been waiting for an hour.” That’s what Audrey says. She states it with a little bit of an edge, her words just bordering on cursive. That’s the thing I think first. Not: Audrey Hepburn is at my birthday dinner, but Audrey Hepburn is annoyed.”

At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends with in her utterly captivating novel, The Dinner List, a story imbued with the same delightful magical realism as One Day, and the life-changing romance of Me Before You.

When Sabrina arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the appetizers are served, wine poured, and dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together.

In My Life: A Music Memoir by Alan Johnson (hardcover)

From being transported by the sound of ‘True Love’ by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly on the radio, as a small child living in condemned housing in ungentrified West London in the late 1950s, to going out to work as a postman humming ‘Watching the Detectives’ by Elvis Costello in 1977, Alan Johnson’s life has always had a musical soundtrack. In fact music hasn’t just accompanied his life, it’s been an integral part of it.

In the bestselling and award-winning tradition of This Boy, In My Life vividly transports us to a world that is no longer with us – a world of Dansettes and jukeboxes, of heartfelt love songs and heart-broken ballads, of smoky coffee shops and dingy dance halls. From Bob Dylan to David Bowie, from Lonnie Donnegan to Bruce Springsteen, all of Alan’s favourites are here. As are, of course, his beloved Beatles, whom he has worshipped with undying admiration since 1963.

But this isn’t just a book about music. In My Life adds a fourth dimension to the story of Alan Johnson the man.

Recently finished

The Dancing Floor by John Buchan (paperback)

Vernon Milburne, orphaned since childhood and haunted by a recurring dream, is friends with the protective lawyer and MP, Sir Edward Leithen.

An Aegean cruise takes them to the mysterious island of Plakos, where Vernon is fascinated by the island’s myths.

Local superstitions turn to menace as Vernon’s encounter with a beautiful woman results in obsession and adventure.

What Cathy (will) Read Next

Train Man by Andrew Mulligan (ebook, courtesy of Vintage, NetGalley and Random Things Tours)

It’s never too late to get back on track.

Michael is a broken man. He’s waiting for the 9.46 to Gloucester, so as to reach Crewe for 11.22: the platforms are long at Crewe, and he can walk easily into the path of a high-speed train to London. He’s planned it all: a net of tangerines (for when the refreshments trolley is cancelled), and a juice carton filled with neat whisky (for Dutch courage). He has his last credit card taped to the inside of his shoe – and that should make identification swift and easy.

What Michael hasn’t factored in is the twelve minute delay, which risks him missing his connection, and making new ones. He longs to silence the voices in his own head: ex-girlfriends, work colleagues, and the memories from his schooldays, decades old. They all torment him. What he really needs is someone to listen, and help him make sense of his grief.

Journeys intersect. People find people when and where they least expect it. A missed connection needn’t be a disaster: it can save your life.

The Mathematical Bridge by Jim Kelly (hardcover, review copy courtesy of Allison & Busby)

Cambridge, 1940. It is the first winter of the war, and snow is falling. When an evacuee drowns in the river, his body swept away, Detective Inspector Eden Brooke sets out to investigate what seems to be a deliberate attack. The following night, a local electronics factory is attacked, and an Irish republican slogan is left at the scene. The IRA are campaigning to win freedom for Ulster, but why has Cambridge been chosen as a target? And when Brooke learns that the drowned boy was part of the close-knit local Irish Catholic community, he begins to question whether there may be a connection between the boy’s death and the attack at the factory. As more riddles come to light, can Brooke solve the mystery before a second attack claims a famous victim?

Tag: memes

6 Degrees of Separation: From Where The Wild Things Are to The Great Darkness