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 Georgi Gospodinov’s International Booker Prize-winning Time Shelter. I’ve yet to read it but the blurb tells me it’s about a clinic for dementia sufferers in which each floor recreates a decade in minute detail. It sounds intriguing.
My first link is by title to Frances Greenslade’s enjoyable debut, Shelter, about two sisters who lose first their father, then their mother when they are children. I bought my copy years ago on holiday.
Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station was also a holiday purchase found in a Madrid bookshop the day before taking a train from the same station.
My favourite read from that holiday was Ethan Canin’s A Doubter’s Almanac about a man with a genius for maths, an addictive personality and a distinct lack of humility whose son inherits the first two traits. I loved it.
As opposed to one of my more recent holiday reads, Anna Bruno’s Ordinary Hazards, for which I had high hopes but which turned into a DNF. Not a bad book, just not for me.
Bruno’s novel takes place in a bar as does Jim Powell’s Things We Nearly Knew, set in small-town America where the husband and wife owners talk over what they’ve heard every night before sleep.
Mary Beth Keane’s The Half Moon features another small-town American bar, this one in danger of closing, owned by a couple whose marriage has hit the skids. A few more weeks before this one’s published here in the UK, but I loved it and couldn’t resist including it.
This month’s Six Degrees has taken me from a book about a clinic for dementia patients to a small town American bar in trouble rather like the owners’ marriage. 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.
I admire your ability to remember where you bought books and which books you read on your holidays!
Ha! Perhaps an indication of my priorities. My copy of Shelter is an American edition so acted as a reminder and I couldn’t not buy the Lerner when I spotted it given we were off to the station the following day.
That holiday feel to the top half of your links is super! Love it. I’ve got the Keane on order now after you loved it so much.
You can see what’s on my mind despite having not been long back from one! I hope you enjoy the Keane as much as I did. Posting my review soon.
Some interesting books here.
Thank you. This is my favourite bookish meme!
As ever, an interesting chain. And almost as ever, I’ve yet to sample any of these. It will happen…
Thank you and hope you enjoy the sampling.
I loved how your holiday reading supplied so many of the links this month! A Doubter’s Almanac with its maths connection sounds like one which I would like to read very much!
Doesn’t take much to make my mind turn to travel! The Canin is excellent. I hope you enjoy it if you find time to read it.
Will keep an eye out for it 🙂
This looks like a harrowing set of books that linked! Intriguing.
Harvee at https://bookdilettante.blogspot.com
Ah, not all harrowing!
Love the holiday theme Susan! I’ll be keeping my eye out for The Half Moon – sounds great!
It wasn’t until I got to the end of it that it became clear just what was on my mind! The Half Moon’s a very classy piece of summer reading.
I’ve just discovered that the author of The Half Moon also wrote Fever, about Typhoid Mary, which I have in the 746!
Oh, that’s great! I’d not heard of her before Ask Again, Yes.
I love a fictionalised account of a real person, which is probably how it made it’s way on to my TBR…
I imagine you’ve read Jill Dawson’s novels, then. Most of them feature real people, some well known figures.
Just Fred and Edie, but I do have a copy of The Language of Birds.
My favourite is The Crime Writer, a piece of Patricia Highsmith fan fiction, but I liked the way she set about redressing the balance of attention from Lord Lucan to his victim in The Language of Birds.
Good to know! I hit send before I had finished my message- I have Lucky Bunny too.
Oh, I’ve not read that one. I’ll wait to see what you think. No pressure!
Nice work. How fun to find that book when you were in that station. So many interesting things here.
Thanks – I really had to buy it then and there!
Understandable!
I love seeing the different kinds of links people come up with, as well as the books themselves. A Doubter’s Almanac sounds especially interesting.
Me, too. A small glimpse into the way other readers’ minds work.
An interesting selection! Even though you weren’t a fan, I’m putting a hold on Ordinary Hazards as it intrigues
I’m glad to hear that. I didn’t think it was a bad book at all but I started it at the wrong time for me. Hope it works for you,
Mary Beth Keane’s first book, The Walking People, is a wonderful story of Irish immigrants from the West Coast of Ireland who come to NYC in the 1950’s and raise a family. I don’t think that it ever got the attention it deserved because it was published in the same year as Colm Toilbin’s Brooklyn.
I’ll give that a try. Thank you. I wasn’t much of a fan of Ask Again, Yes but loved The Half Moon.
Things We Nearly Knew sounds like a great way to frame the life of a place and A Doubter’s Almanac also sounds intriguing. As you say – the endlessly different routes we take to connections – mine is at https://how-would-you-know.com/2023/07/6-degrees-of-separation-time-shelter.html
Yes, having your characters running a small town bar is a smart structure and an appealing one. Thanks for your link.