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 Catherine Newman’s enjoyable Sandwich about a woman who finds herself sandwiched between her grown up children and her rapidly ageing parents.
Mieko Kawakami’s Ms Ice Sandwich is a coming-of-age story about a young boy’s crush on a supermarket worker with enormous eyes.
No relation, or perhaps she is, Strange Weather in Tokyo is by Hiromi Kawakami
Which was originally published in English with the title The Briefcase no doubt leading to disappointment for some which is what I felt when I opened Jennifer Close’s The Smart One only to find I’d already read it under the title of Things We Need.
Close’s new novel Marrying the Ketchups is about a family in the restaurant business leading me to Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler who I compared with Close in my review of Things We Need.
Which leads me to Christoph Ribbat’s In the Restaurant whose subtitle tells us it explores Society in Four Courses.
Making me remember an old favourite: Margaret Vissers’s Much Depends on Dinner which looks at the history of the ingredients of a meal.
This month’s Six Degrees has taken me from a novel about a woman sandwiched between generations to an exploration of social history through an everyday North American meal. 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.
It can be confusing when books are published under different titles! I haven’t read any of these, but Much Depends on Dinner sounds interesting.
It certainly can! I read the Visser so long ago but still remember it. Fascinating book
This is a great chain. Annoying and confusing when books are republished under different titles!
Here’s mine for this month: https://portobellobookblog.com/2024/12/07/6degrees-of-separation-for-2024-from-sandwich-by-catherine-newman-to-the-secrets-of-flowers-by-sally-page/
It most certainly is, particularly when you discover that’s the case just as the plane takes off! Thanks, Joanne.
I enjoyed “Marrying the Ketchups” but that was my first book by her. I’ll take a look at others, since she seems to have a couple. As for “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” it was also very good, but not my favorite Tyler. Lovely chain here!
Thank you, Davida! I’m looking forward to the Ketchups.
Such fun links. Why do they change titles? It can be so confusing.
Thanks, Annabel. I really don’t know – so frustrating. I’d saved the Close for a flight so you can imagine how fed up I was when I started reading.
Great food theme going on here. One book I have read is Tyler’s, a long time ago. It started me following her writing.
Thank you. It’s a theme close to my heart!
I detect an eating/restaurant theme. Yours in the clearest theme I’ve noted today! Bravo.
My list: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2024/12/6-degrees-of-separation-from-sandwich-to.html
Thanks, Helen. Not what I expected when I started but it certainly seems to have worked out that way!
What a good chain! Love seeing Anne Tyler here and added a book to my tbr.
Thsn you!
It can be very confusing and frustrating when books are published under different titles! I liked all the foodie titles this month!
Fun chain!
Much depends on Dinner sounds tempting!
Mine: https://cathysreadingbonanza.wordpress.com/2024/12/08/6degrees-of-separation-december-2024-from-cape-cod-to-ethiopia/
Thanks for the link, Cathy. Much Depends… is a fascinating way of exploring history and also anthropology. It’s decades since I read it but I still remember it well.
References to Anne Tyler’s books always catch my eye. A long time ago I read a lot of her books. I don’t know exactly why I haven’t read anything by her more recently. I do remember Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant as being very typically Anne Tyler, which I definitely mean as a compliment.
I’m sure she’d be happy with that! I read her new one on NetGalley recently and loved it. A novella this time.
oh.. I do that with books I have read with the same title itself sometimes!! But totally agree it is confusing to rename books.. Love how you linked each one to the next..love the title – Ms Ice Sandwich. And Much Depends sounds so very interesting..
My post is here
It’s so annoying , isn’t it. Thank you, and for your link.
As ever, a clever chain. I particularly liked the way you linked to Jennifer Close. And heigh ho: I haven’t – yet – read a single book from among your choices.
Thank you. At least my frustration with the Close wasn’t in vain.
A great chain as always Susan. I too get annoyed when picking up books where they’ve changed titles–most recently this happened when I thought I found a ‘new’ Georgette Heyer mystery–but it was Envious Casca published as A Christmas Party! From your list, the one I most want to read is Strange Weather.
My own chain this time is still on paper. I seem to be struggling to find time to type it out!
Thanks, Mallika. I’m astonished that publishers would do that to a Georgette Heyer title. You’ll be far from the only fan to have been misled and disappointed. Hope you’re busy in a good way.
I was lucky I didn’t have a copy of Envious Casca so I was a little less annoyed. With Christie this is pretty regular–American titles/English ones and also the different collections they’ve brought out over time with new names and different combinations of the same stories.
Glad to hear you were spared too much disappointment. I’ve come across it with American/British editions but in Jennifer Close’s case the hardback title was changed for the paperback. Grrr…