Six Degrees of Separaton: Western Lane to To Say Nothing of the Dog

 

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. 

 

This month's starting point is Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, which is a novella that has been nominated for the Booker prize.

For my first link I am going to be a bit obvious and go with the opposite direction to West and choose East of Eden by John Steinbeck! East of Eden was a book that I read thanks to the Oprah Book Club back in the day. 

Another book I read through that was One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia. I recently heard that that Netflix are making a series from this book.

Another book that recently got the Netflix treatment was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. I haven't started watching it yet, but we will. After all, reading this book inspired us to stay in St. Malo when we were in France earlier this year.

A place I would love to visit in France after reading about it in a book is Carcasonne. A book that is set there is Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Another author named Kate is Kate Atkinson and I have chosen to use her book Started Early, Took the Dog for the purposes of this exercise.

Keeping with the dog theme, my final selection is To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

The starting point for next month is Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.

Where did your chain take you this month?

Top Ten Tuesday: The Classics edition

 

 

 

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Favorite Heroines (or heroes, if you prefer!) but I am going to go off topic this week...again. I am currently listening to Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne, so I thought that I would share classics I have read. I know that I should have read many more, but oh well. No guilt allowed right!

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne - Listening to this now!

Les Miserable by Victor Hugo - What a massive undertaking this was!

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - I read this last year for Cook the Books and thoroughly enjoyed it!

East of Eden by John Steinbeck -   There's several books on this list that I read thanks to Oprah's book club!

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald - I read this back in high school and then read it again 10 years ago.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - This was another Oprah read. I did end up going on to read and enjoy a number of his books.

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen  - Still the only Austen I have ever read - Shocking I know!

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - I read this after reading Mr Pip!

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell - I did think about putting up the cover of the DVD of the BBC series as the picture here (hello Richard Armitage) but I restrained myself!

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I really enjoyed this! Another Oprah read!

What's your favourite classic?

Six Degrees of Separation: The Bass Rock to A Desperate 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 Bass Rock by Evie Wyld which is a book I have heard of before, but haven't read. 

My first connection is to another author I haven't read yet, Evie Dunmore. She writes historical romances and has a series titled the League of Extraordinary Women which I have heard good things about. This is the first book in that series. I'll get to them one day. Maybe.

This time I am going to link surnames to Helen Dunmore and her book, The Greatcoat. I think I borrowed this from the library a few times but I never did quite get to reading it. I have read other books by her though.

The window on that cover made me think of The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket. Many years ago an America friend from Oprahs Book Club sent me several of the Lemony Snicket books. Unfortunately she passed at a very young age. So sad.

One of the first books I read as part of that groups was One Hundred Years of  Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

My next link is to Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, for the only reason that she is another South American author.

And because I never miss an opportunity to link to a Susanna Kearsley book so for my final link I have chosen A Desperate Fortune.

I feel like I have jumped a bit all over the place this month. Next month we start with Eat, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Redhead by the Side of the Road to One Hundred Years of Solitude

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 missed last months Six Degrees which was a shame, but I am back this month with a list that contains at least one tenuous link! See if you can spot it.

The starting point this month is Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler, an author who I have  never read, although I am sure I should have! I did think about doing books with red in the title but I have a feeling I have done that before, if not in Six Degrees, definitely in a Top Ten Tuesday post, so I took a different direction.

The Secret of the Mansion by Julie Campbell (Trixie Belden mysteries book 1) - My first thought related to the word redhead and that kind of inevitably lead to me to think about my first red headed book crush - Jim from the Trixie Belden books!

Voyager by Diana Gabaldon - Jim was not my only red headed literary crush. There was also James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser from the Outlander series. This book, the third in the main series, is probably my favourite. Maybe it is something about a variation of the name James, and not the redhead, but I don't think so.

The Red Scarf/Under a Blood Red Sky by Kate Furnivall - When I checked my handy dandy spreadsheet which list the books I have read since  2004, the author directly above Diana Gabaldon alphabetically is Kate Furnival. I kept on thinking about the red scarf as the link too. This book is set in 1930s Russia, specifically in a Siberian prison camp.

The Tolstoy Estate by Steven Conte - Also set in Russia, but this time during WWII, this was one of my favourite books from last year

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - An obvious connection here, from a book where most of the action takes place at Tolstoy's house  to a book written by the man.

One Hundred  Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- I originally read Anna Karenina as part of Oprah's Book Club back in the 90s.  This was the first book that I ever  read with the book club! I am not sure I would've read either without my fellow readers and the fun that we had in the forums. I am still online friends with a lot of those people now!

Did you spot the very tenuous link?

Next month the starting point is Phosphorence by Julia Baird, which is going to be interesting to find a connection to. Better get my thinking cap on early for that one!

Weekly Geeks #3 - The Classics

I don't know where I was last week, but I completely neglected to do Weekly Geeks! So this week I want to get an early start. This week's theme is to "have fun with the classics". The explanation is a long one, so I am just going to link to it for now, and you can go and have a look at the suggestions at your leisure.

The timing of this assignment is actually pretty good because I have just recently finished listening to Great Expectations on audio book. Having really enjoyed that listening experience I am planning to listen to more classics on audio during this year. The first step will be to rectify what others may perceive as being one of the big gaps in my reading experience, and that is the fact that I have never, ever read any Jane Austen. I have Pride and Prejudice waiting for me to pick up the next time that I make it to the library.

Whilst I have read some classics (some thanks to Oprah and others due to the old Barnes and Noble University), it is an area where I am not as well read as I probably should be. Part of the reason for that is the general impression that reading them will be a bit too much like hard work. Of the ones I have read like East of Eden, Anna Karenina, The Odyssey and One Hundred Years of Solitude, I ended up really loving them. I do think that part of the reason for my enjoyment is the fact that I read it along with an online group, and therefore was able to chat about my reading experience as I went along, and to hear other people's thoughts and questions. With the Gabriel Garcia Marquez books I was able to pick up a couple of his other books and read them by myself, but I haven't yet got that brave when it comes to Tolstoy. It's not that I haven't thought about reading War and Peace for example. It's more that I would prefer to read the version by the same translators who did Anna Karenina and I haven't yet seen it in the shops here, and I don't really think that War and Peace is a practical choice for a library read. Of course, I didn't love them all. There are some that I just didn't really get why particular books are considered classics, or even if I can see why, found them just not readable - not books that you can easily get lost in. (William Faulkner anyone?)

So what prompted me to actually pick up Great Expectations by myself? Well, it was really as a result of other reads. Last year I read Jack Maggs by Peter Carey for an online reading group, and I really did not know until we were part way through the discussion that the book was a reworking of Great Expectations with a couple of additional angles and characters. Not long after that I also read Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which isn't a retelling as such but rather a homage to the power of a classic book. Having read both of those, it was an obvious step to actually pick up the book that inspired both of those authors. I think that because the path seemed so organic and that I wasn't forcing myself to read something is a part of why I enjoyed it as well.

The only other classic that I have read recently was North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, and that was inspired by the BBC adaption. (It is sooo tempting to put in a gratuitous picture of Richard Armitage, but I will try to control myself).

I have often thought about reading more classics, particularly as I know that it will enhance my reading of some of my other favourite reads - for example the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde which are populated by so many classic characters. Whilst I have always known who Miss Havisham is as an example, I am pretty sure that I would appreciate her character when she appears in the Fforde books more now that I have read more about Miss Havisham in her original setting.

As an additional part of this week's Weekly Geeks, I am going to try to ensure that I post my review of Great Expectations! Stay tuned.

Oh, what the heck! Gratuitous shot included for my viewing pleasure, and anyone else who happens to enjoy the view too!

What's going on?

I am contemplating not one, not two but three rereads! Now I know that there are a lot of people out there who do lots of rereads, but I am not one of them. So far this year I haven't reread any books, and in all of last year I only reread one book, and that was a book that I had originally read in high school.

So what's prompted this?

Well, the girls over a Book Binge started it! Their Hero of the Month for October is the delicious Cam Quinn from Sea Swept by Nora Roberts. This was the first book by Nora Roberts that I read, and I just absolutely loved it! I ended up reading all four books in the Chesapeake Bay series in the space of about two weeks. As much as I really liked the other Quinn boys, it was Cam who captured my heart! And despite the fact that I still have a gazillion other Nora books that I haven't read yet, I am thinking that it won't hurt to have a little visit with Cam! Anna is a very lucky girl!

The second book that I am contemplating rereading is Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Oprah has just chosen it as her next book club pick. I was originally introduced to Marquez through the Oprah book club when she chose One Hundred Years of Solitude a few years ago. Since then, every now and again, I read another book by this author. He is an author that I probably would never have chosen to read by myself, but I did love Love in the Time of Cholera. I am thinking about rereading this one, and maybe it's time to try a new Marquez.

The third book is His Majesty's Dragon(Temeraire) by Naomi Novik. One of the groups that I am a member of has this book scheduled as their book of the month for January. Discussion starts January 10, and I am thinking that, since I enjoyed it so much the first time, I might need to reacquaint myself with the book before discussion starts. Such a chore! In the meantime, I am hoping to receive Empire of Ivory sometime in the next couple of weeks!

By the way, have you been to visit Sybil's blog today? Her guest blogger is one of my fave historical romance authors...Lisa Kleypas. There's some really fun posts, and a couple of scrummy excerpts. I hope Mine Till Midnight gets here soon!

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Dr Juvenal Urbino, most distinguished physician along the Caribbean coast, illustrious for civic achievements and artistic patronage, died aged eighty-one-and-a-half of a broken spine when he fell from the branch of a mango tree as he tried to catch a parrot.

His widow, the once breath-taking Fermina Daza, was enraged at the emptiness which lay before her. She instinctively recoiled from the one hand extended to steady and comfort her - a hand which for her long life had always been within reach but which, in her haughtiness and guilt, she would not acknowledge: the hand of Florentino Ariza.

For his part, Ariza's desolate vigil of devotion had begun half a century before, on Fermina's afternoons of embroidery under the almond trees in Los Evangelio's park. His secret obsession had led him into an enigmatic existence and shadowy social reputation despite his renown in business. In the city consecrated to the cult of the Holy Spirit, one Pentecost, love found a new tongue with which to speak.

In a novel unequalled since his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez tells a love story which will haunt and inspire his readers for generations.

I don't know what it is about Marquez's writing. It isn't easy, but it is oh so rewarding.

His style is one of a wanderer. The storyline moves backwards and forwards through time in a meandering fashion, almost as though the author is mortally afraid of following a straight line, and yet the story moves steadily forward. Marquez is also a known master of magical realism, and there is plenty of that within this novel, along with laugh out loud humour. For example, at one point we learn that Fernanda and her husband had not spoken for several months because they were having a fight about whether or not there was soap in the shower - a completely inane thing to be fighting about, but portrayed in such a way that it was possible to believe that it could be real - as real as when dealing with larger issues such as infidelity.

In this book, the story is really a love story...a grand passion that lasts for decades and decades, despite the fact that it is unrequited for most of that time.

I did find it somewhat amazing that by the end of the book I still felt compassion for the main characters, especially Ariza, because he was a far from likeable man. Or maybe there was just one episode that made me feel that he was unlikeable.

This is the kind of novel that makes it possible to believe in impossible love and of sailing into the sunset with the one that you love! It is also the kind of novel that you know you will find new things in each time that you read it! Really, really enjoyable.

Rating 4.5/5


Other Blogger's Thoughts:

Chris @ Book-a-Rama
Things Mean a Lot