Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.
This month we’re starting with Gail Sheehy’s Passages, a ‘70s self-help book I remember stocking when I was a bookseller but have never read
I remember selling shed loads of Robin Skynner and John Cleese’s self-help classic Families and How to Survive Them over school holidays.
I can’t mention John Cleese without thinking of Fawlty Towers (soon to be reprised) and the hapless Manuel leading me to Matias Faldbakken’s highly entertaining The Waiter.
There’s an incident in The Waiter where the titular character has one coffee too many with disastrous results leading me to Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold which I’ve read but remember little or nothing about.
The coffee and books combination makes me think of the late, lamented Costa Awards leading me to Claire Fuller’s Unsettled Ground, the last Costa Novel Winner.
The central characters in Fuller’s novel are twins bringing to mind Guy Ware’s The Peckham Experiment in which one twin is preparing for the other’s funeral.
An apartment building features prominently in Ware’s novel leading me to Georges Perec’s Life, A User’s Manual, all about the tenants of a Parisian block of flats.
This month’s Six Degrees has taken me from a classic self-help manual to a classic French novel revolving around an apartment building’s tenants. Part of the fun of this meme is comparing the very different routes other bloggers take from each month’s starting point. If you’re interested, you can follow it on Twitter with the hashtag #6Degrees, check out the links over at Kate’s blog or perhaps even join in.
John Cleese’s book was a classic in its time, and I can’t remember anything from it. Nor of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. Unsettled Ground though,I enjoyed that. And your other books appeal too, particularly the Perec. An interesting chain.
Thank you. The Perec is one of those novels that use an apartment block as a microcosm for society, and does it brilliantly.
Like the way you wove coffee into the chain, although I didn’t like Before the Coffee Gets Cold book, which I thought was sentimental clap-trap and poorly written.
I’m about to start reading with a coffee at my side! Pleased that I remember nothing about Before the Coffee Gets Cold, then
It’s OK, you’re allowed to like different things from me! And I am by no means the ultimate arbiter of literary style!
I laughed at your comment “books which I’ve read but remember little or nothing about” because it happens to me frequently. I often can’t recall much about books I read years before or even – if it wasn’t for Goodreads – that I’d read them at all. Perhaps an ‘occupational hazard’ for those of us who read so many books…
And those of us of a certain age! I remember the books I review but very rarely the ones I don’t unless they’re truly excellent.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold I remember as part of a series in a coffee shop where strange people sit over coffee and either disappear into a magical reality or resolve their problems. I’ll have to reread.
That’s it! Although, I have no memory of any details. I’ve a feeling there’s a sequel.
The coffee connection is clever—especially integrating the (much-lamented) Costas!
Thanks! I so hoped someone would rescue the Costas, one of my favourite awards.
It’s interesting that the Folio has now adopted the Costa structure, with multiple genre awards and a final big one. I wonder if that was on purpose.
Very pleased to hear that. It was the range that I liked so much about the Costas. Fingers crossed Folio will keep that going.
Oh, I didn’t know there were no more Costa awards! Too bad. Oh well… great chain here!
Thanks! Yes, it’s sad about the Costas. Always a great range of titles.
There was a sequel to the Kawaguchi more of the same. I wasn’t convinced by the first, but I do like your coffee links.
Thank you. One I definintely don’t need to worry about adding to my tbr!
Well done!
Thank you!
Great chain Susan, I loved the Perec!
I’m very fond of the apartment device! Thanks, Cathy.
You have a lovely chain this month and it was an interesting link-up. I still want to read When the Coffee gets cold.
Have a lovely month ahead!
Elza Reads
Thank you, and you, too. Thanks for the link.
A Very neat chain!
I haven’t read any of those books, but Perec’s interested me, it sounds intriguing.
My #6Degree
Thank you! The Perec is execellent. I’ve read it twice now and it was just as good the second time around. Thanks for your link.
Fawlty Towers was such good fun. I love how that took you to the Waiter and Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I had meant to read the latter in the second half of February but then things went rather differently than planned
Thank you! Hard to credit how few episodes there were of Fawlty Towers given the influence they’ve wielded.