Six Degrees of Separation: Normal People to The Ship of Brides

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.

I haven't always read the books that we start off with but I did just finish listen to Normal People this week which is the starting book for this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation. I think I got it either as a freebie or cheap daily deal from Audible a while ago. When I finished my last audiobook I looked at the books I had available in my account. There was one that was more than 32 hours, and a couple of others that were more than 25 hours, and I just wasn't ready to commit to an audiobook that long. At just under 8 hours, Normal People was an ideal choice. and the narration by Aiofe McMahon was really good.

The reason I specifically mentioned Aiofe McMahon as the narrator is that she was also the narrator for The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan, which was the audiobook that I finished before Normal People. The Good Turn is a very different book to Normal People so it was a bit of a shock to hear the same narrator but you get used to it pretty quickly. I have had that happen to me before too! The Good Turn was an excellent entry in the Cormac Reilly series, and I can't wait to read more.

Another Irish really good crime series is Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad.  I read the early books in this series years ago (before it was even really considered a series. I do have a couple of books left to read at some point too. The first book of this series is In the Woods.

Woods play an important role in many books, and particularly in fairy tales and fantasy. For my next book I have chosen Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I love this book but it is one of the few examples where the movie is better than the book - marginally - mainly thanks to Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare!

I can't really remember if the movie of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was better than the book but it was enjoyable. Good job then that isn't the link that I am using. Rather it is the word star that is the link. I did a conversational review about this book and the first question I asked was Did you cry?  to which my answer was yet.

However, it wasn't ugly, sobbing crying which is what I have felt all three times I have read Me Before You by Jojo Moyes which is my next choice. This book ripped my heart out, stomped on it a couple of times and then stuffed it back in upside down. There are two other books in this series which are good but didn't get me in the same way. As an aside, if you are a fan of the Lou Clark trilogy which this is the first book for, check out the COVID-10/Isolation short story which you can read here.

I have loved several of Jojo Moyes' books so I thought that I would make the last choice for this month the first book I read by her, The Ship of Brides. The book is about four Australian war brides who board a ship to England to meet up with their husbands heading into a life full of unknowns. I can't believe I read this book more than 13 years ago (way before the current historical fiction fascination for WWII kicked in) and I still think about it some times. Our four brides were normal people who uprooted their whole lives in the name of love.

The starting point for next month is What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt which I haven't heard of before let alone read. 

This week...

I'm reading....

I mentioned last week that I was just starting Palace of Tears by Julian Leatherdale. It is a big book so I haven't finished it yet, but I am making good progress. This is a dual timeline novel - you know I am a sucker for those books! I did find myself contemplating how many male authors there are out there in historical fiction land writing dual timeline books? Do you know of any others?

I also started reading The Silk House by Australian author Katye Nunn which is another multiple timeline book. I really meant to read her last book but I never got around to it even though it sounded great. I already know that I will be going back to read her previous books even based on the small part of this book I have read.

I finished listening to The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan this week. When it came time to pick my next audiobook I had multiple options but the ones that I was thinking about choosing were all really long. I therefore decided to look at the books that I have had in my Audible library and realised that Normal People by Sally Rooney was there. It only goes for just over 7 hours, and it is also the starting point for this month's Six Degrees of Separation meme so I decided to go with that as my choice.

What did surprise me was that it has the same narrator who read (or should I say performed?) The Good Turn. These are very different style of books so that was a bit of a surprise and took a little while to get used to. The other thing that I was reminded of is that I find it much more confronting listening to sex scenes than I reading them. I can read very explicit books no problems, but I get a bit a bit flustered listening to them. Weird, I know.

I was super excited to hear that later in the year there is going to be a new Virgin River book from Robyn Carr. I loved the Virgin River series and have read them a couple of times, but her other books haven't done it as much for me. And I enjoyed the Virgin River series on Netflix as well. It's probably smart to built on the success of the series with a new book now.

I'm watching...

We didn't really watch anything new this week that I haven't mentioned in previous posts.

In life...

It's the first day of winter! Do you know what that means? Time to break out a new toothbrush. The first day of a new season is always my prompt to change toothbrushes. Am I the only one who does this?

With our restrictions slowly being relaxed, this weekend we decided to get out of the house. On Saturday we were and had lunch with a couple of friends. They are the people who we caught up with most during social isolation so it was really good to catch up with them face to face. I did have to laugh. We took two jigsaws to her and she unexpectedly gave me four books in return. That's how it's supposed to work isn't it?

It is a bit strange to be seeing people face to face again. We have been inside for so long that I found the idea of going out to socialise a bit daunting, and I could almost have talked myself out of going, but it was fine once I got there. The other thing was that was the first time I put earrings and makeup on in weeks!

We do love the panorama setting on our phone camera

On Sunday we decided to head down the coast about an hour or so ago and we invited one of my husband's work friend to meet us there. It wasn't too cold and the sun was out so it was nice to get down to the beach, get some fresh air. We also got to eat some delicious fish and chips. We had something called charcoal prawns. I have no idea how they cooked them but they were delicious.

Other than that, this is the weekend before we do our bathroom renovation so we've been spending a serious amount of money at the hardware store. Now we just have to hope that the choices of accent tiles and things like that all come together. There is a small issue in that a couple of the bigger items we need had to be ordered in so they might not be here in time for next weekend but we will do what we can.

Posts from the last week

Top Ten Tuesday: Opening Lines
Book Review: The Railway Girls by Maisie Thomas
Alphabet 2020: I is for Me! Me! Me!
Weeking Cooking: May Bakes
Reading Reflections: May 2020

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date