Tag: memes

#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Orbital by Samantha Harvey to False Lights by K. J. Whittaker

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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.

Book cover of Orbital by Samantha Harvey

This month’s starting book is the Booker Prize-winning Orbital by Samantha Harvey set on a spacecraft in which six astronauts are orbiting the Earth. For once it’s a novel I’ve read and reviewed on my blog.

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

Fairly predictably my first link is to another book set in space, Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar, in which a Czech astronaut – the country’s first – is launched into space to investigate a mysterious dust cloud covering Venus.

Another book set in what is now the Czech Republic is HHhH by Laurence Binet. It’s the fictionalised account of Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of high-ranking SS officer Reinhard Heydrich by two members of the Czech resistance in 1942.

An attempt to assassinate a prominent figure, in this case French President Charles de Gaulle, forms the plot of The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth. (President de Gaulle survived an actual assassination attempt in 1962.)

The assassin in The Day of the Jackal is unnamed as is the narrator of Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household in which an Englishman attempts to assassinate the dictator of a European country. The dictator is not named but since the book was published in 1939 his identity is fairly obvious.

Fatherland by Robert Harris is set in an alternate world in which Hitler won the Second World War and has lived long enough to celebrate his 75th birthday.

False Lights by K. J. Whittaker (republished in 2021 under the title Game of Hearts) imagines a scenario in which Napoleon triumphed at the Battle of Waterloo and England is under French occupation and presided over by the Empress Josephine.

My chain has taken me from outer space to a reimagined Europe. Where did your chain take you?

False Lights

#WWWWednesday – 25th December 2024

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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 Silence of ScherazadeThe Silence of Scheherazade by Defne Suman, trans. by Betsy Göksel (Apollo via NetGalley) 

On an orange-tinted evening in September 1905, Scheherazade is born to an opium-dazed mother in the ancient city of Smyrna.

At the very same moment, a dashing Indian spy arrives in the harbour with a secret mission from the British Empire. He sails in to golden-hued spires and minarets, scents of fig and sycamore, and the cries of street hawkers selling their wares. When he leaves, seventeen years later, it will be to the heavy smell of kerosene and smoke as the city, and its people, are engulfed in flames.

But let us not rush, for much will happen between then and now. Birth, death, romance and grief are all to come as these peaceful, cosmopolitan streets are used as bargaining chips in the wake of the First World War.

Told through the intertwining fates of a Levantine, a Greek, a Turkish and an Armenian family, this unforgettable novel reveals a city, and a culture, now lost to time.

The Second SleepThe Second Sleep by Robert Harris (Cornerstone)

Dusk is gathering as a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, rides across a silent land.

It’s a crime to be out after dark, and Fairfax knows he must arrive at his destination – a remote village in the wilds of Exmoor – before night falls and curfew is imposed.

He’s lost and he’s becoming anxious as he slowly picks his way across a countryside strewn with the ancient artefacts of a civilisation that seems to have ended in cataclysm.

What Fairfax cannot know is that, in the days and weeks to come, everything he believes in will be tested to destruction, as he uncovers a secret that is as dangerous as it is terrifying …

Recently finished

The DraughtsmanThe Draughtsman by Robert Lautner (The Borough Press)

What Cathy Will Read Next

The Ghosts of ParisThe 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 . . .