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.
We’re starting with Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow which I’ve yet to read but I know it features a group of friends, all game developers.
As is Naomi Alderman whose debut, Disobedience, is about the bisexual daughter of an Orthodox rabbi who returns from New York to Hendon when he dies.
Pearl Abraham’s The Romance Reader is about a young woman who also flouted the rules of her Orthodox community, this time in a more subversive way as the title suggests.
In Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness Nomi, a young Mennonite girl, yearns to break free from the strictures of her sect.
Nomi daydreams about meeting Lou Reed who turns up as an unlikely father figure to a sixteen-year-old lost boy in Michael Imperioli’s The Perfume Burnt His Eyes.
I’m linking by title to Patrick Süskind’s Perfume in which the murderer has a very highly developed sense of smell.
The main protagonist in Jonathan Grimwood’s The Last Banquet has a similarly acute sense of taste and will literally eat anything.
This month’s Six Degrees has taken me from creating virtual worlds to an eighteenth-century boy, first spotted relishing stag beetles. 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.
As ever, an interesting chain introducing books I don’t know. I may head for the Toews and the Abraham first.
Thank you, Margaret. I think the Toews may be easier to track down,
I think you and I are the only ones who read that Last Banquet book. A bit of a gory ending, for my taste (no pun intended) but still pretty good.
Ha! I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, given how squeamish I am, but I loved it.
Great chain Susan. I’m very keen to read the Imperioli
Thanks, Cathy. I’ve yet to read it but was very struck by the idea of Lou Reed as a father figure!
What a great first link! I still have The Last Banquet on my shelves somewhere, but like Cathy, the Imperioli does attract me too.
Thank you! It just popped into my head. Highly recommend The Last Banquet, although it might make you feel a little queasy at times.
Great chain. I love your last link from smell to taste!
Thank you! Two very striking novels.
All sound so interesting! The only one I’ve read is The Romance Reader. I was working in sales for the publisher and read it prepub. The cover them was very different and quite striking: https://www.humanitieskansas.org/events/6920/the-romance-reader-by-pearl-abraham
Oh, that’s great! UK and US covers are often so very different, aren’t they.
Though I haven’t read any of your choices they all seem so intriguing to me, like the murderer with a heightened sense of smell. So creative.
Here is my post: #6Degrees
Happy New Year.
Fixed link: Here is my post: #6Degrees
Thanks!
Absolutely! I read Perfume many years ago but it’s a book that stays with you. Happy 2024 to you, too!
Interesting choices. I read and liked The Romance Reader, but the others are all new to me. I’ve just put a Complicated Kindness on my TBR. There are lots of Mennonites and Amish around me.
An appropriate read for you, then. Toews was a Mennonite which makes it all the more interesting.
I’m sure I’ll get to it due to the “neighbors”. I have to say it’s funny to see a normal suburban house, albeit built out on a county road (bought second-hand) with an Amish buggy in the garage and a small barn out back for the horse! Of course they just use propane instead of electric to run the the stove, fridge & water heater lol Mennonites are pretty normal–drive, etc.
Nice!
I so want to try Perfume!
https://wordsandpeace.com/2024/01/06/six-degrees-of-separation-from-tomorrow-to-the-last-days/
Thank you, and for your link.
Perfume is a book I’ve thought about reading many times but (perhaps it was images from the movie, though I haven’t seen it fully) I keep thinking it might be too creepy for me. But I am still thinking and to that list will add The Last Banquet!
It is pretty creepy but so good!