Six Degrees of Separation: Sunflowers to Daughter of Fortune

 

 

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 this month is the book that we finished with last month. This means that my starting point is Sunflowers by Sheramy Brundrick. Sunflowers is about the life of Vincent Van Gogh. 

Over the years I have read a number of books about art history, but I think for the purposes of this exercise I am going to choose Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant, which is set during the Renaissance.

I saw Sarah Dunant speak at Melbourne Writers Festival a few years ago. Someone who I saw at MWF last year was Pip Williams, so for my next book I am choosing The Book Binder of Jericho which was one of my 5/5 reads last year.

My first 5/5 read for this year was a book called The Naturalist of Amsterdam by Melissa Hamilton. This is the story of a young woman who works for her mother which is a famous naturalist. Their travels take them as far a field as Suriname.

This book reminded me a bit of A Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert.

And it also reminded me of The Botanist's Daughter by Katye Nunn which I listened to last year but apparently neglected to record it on either of my spreadsheets or Goodreads, so it took me a little while to find the title.

 Part of The Botanist's Daughter was set in Chile, so my final link had to be a book that was also partially set in the same country which is Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende. I could also have linked through the word daughter as well!

The starting point next month is Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Will you be joining us?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with nature on the cover

 

 

 

 

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 nature on the cover. A month or so ago, I did a post which featured lots of water on the covers. It surprised me to see that I actually only reused one of those covers, and yet, I still have several more watery covers to share this week.

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen - I thought I would start with a garden which instantly brings me to Garden Spells

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert - I love the cover on this book, and I was really surprised when I read it as I wasn't sure what to expect.

Last Bridge Before Home by Lily Malone - There are so many rural romances that I could have featured, but I decided to echo the river scene in these two choices.

Virgin River by Robyn Carr - The reality is that I could have picked just about any book from the Virgin River series. One day I would love to visit the area where these books are set.

The Survivors by Jane Harper - My next two choices are both Australian authors, both with ocean scenes. This first one though is the wild sea.

Tiny White Lies by Fiona Palmer - And this is the calmer sea.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens - I think there's a certain synergy between these two covers even though they are completely different types of water.

Bila Yarraghanggalangdhuray by Anita Heiss - This is my repeat cover, mainly because I need to hurry up and finish writing the review for this book.

The Burial by Courtney Collins - The covers for these two remind me of the time we spent looking at the stars at Uluru a month or so ago.

The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes - Sirius I think?