Six Degrees of Separation: What Are You Going Through to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

 Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.  I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz. 

The starting point for this month is a book called What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez. I found this a tough book to start with. I am also realising that so often my go to books for this meme are the same ones! I think I have avoided that this time, but only just. And there's no guarantee that it won't happen in future!

What You Are Going Through appears to have a number of themes, but one of them is about euthanasia which brings me to my first book which is Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.

After the death of a loved one, what follow is grief. Grief is a central theme of The Secret of Snow by Viola Shipman which I read this week.

There was a lot of snow in The Secret of Snow and the word snow is what made me choose In Falling Snow by Mary-Rose MacColl. I loved this book when I read it a few years ago. It is set in WWI France.

Also partially set in WWI is Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole, and you can't do a connections about an epistolary book set during war without then linking to the next book. You just can't!

That right! The next book is The GuernseyLiterary and Potato Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows.

From there, the final choice is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, part of the Flavia de Luce mystery series.

Next month's starting book is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, and I already have two ideas of what my first links might be.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Long Titles

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books with Long Titles.

Sometimes I am very grateful to have my handy dandy spreadsheet that goes back 15 years, especially for prompts like this when I can quickly search, or scan through the lists, to come up with ideal options.

So here are 10 books I have read at some point the last 15 years which have pretty long titles

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale - I like the Suspicions of Mr Whicher as a title but Murder at Road Hill House probably gives you a bit better idea what the book is about.

Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice by Nam Le - Long title for a short story

Gallipoli: Our Last Man Standing - the extraordinary life of Alec Campbell by Jonathan King - Is it cheating to have a book with subtitle as part of this? I think not.

The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa by Alexander McCall Smith - This is a long title for a collection of short folk stories.

Welcome to Rosie Hopkins Sweet Shop of Dreams by Jenny Colgan - What  a sweet story...pun intended

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B by Sandra Gulland - The first book in a trilogy about Josephine Bonaparte 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Maryann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - What a lovely book this was. It has been a long time since I read it!

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean - This is the first book in a trilogy of books with long titles

The Weed that Strings the Hangmans Bag by Alan Bradley - This is the second book in another series with long titles!

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodent by Terry Pratchett - Never miss a chance to include a Pratchett in the list!