Six Degrees of Separation: Passages to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

 

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 book called Passages by Gail Sheehy. Apparently this was a very popular self help book in the 1970s.

My first link is using the word passages. Great Passages by Shion Miura is about the creation of a dictionary, and is set in Japan.

I thought about choosing a book with great in the title, but instead chose Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi  which is also set in Japan, this time in a cafe in Tokyo.

I did think about trying to do a whole chain set in Japan, but decided against it. Instead I am choosing another book set in a cafe - Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber

I have no shortage of books that feature cafes or restaurants, but instead I am chose to link using the word birds. The book I chose is Mateship with Birds by Carrie Tiffany.

One thing that Aussies pride themselves on, rightly or wrongly,  is the idea of mateship. Much of the ideal of this comes from the Australian campaign at Gallipolli in WWI. Thomas Keneally's book, The Daughters of Mars tells the story of a nurse during that campaign.

I don't often try to go full circle with Six Degrees, but this time I think I have managed it. We started with a self help books from the 70s. Let's finish with another one, this time from the 90's. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray was everywhere back in the day.

I found the starting point this month quite easy and had done a couple of other full chains before deciding on this one.

Next month's starting point is an autobiography, Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. 

Where did your chain take you this month?

Six Degrees of Separation: Rodham to Light Between Oceans

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 Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld. I can't imagine that I will ever read this book as I don't think it is my kind of book. It is an alternate telling of the life of Hilary Rodham Clinton, asking the question of what her life would have been like had she not married Bill Clinton.

For my first link in the chain, I have gone down the alternate history route, but kind of an extreme alternate. In the world that that Jasper Fforde has created for the Thursday Next series,  which starts with The Eyre Affair, dodos are the pet of choice, you can travel from one side of the world to the other in a tube, and the Crimean War still rages on even though it is 1985.

For my next link, I am focusing on the Crimean War and choosing The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon. The Rose of Sebastopol is about a young woman who goes off to the Crimean War to be a nurse alongside Florence Nightingale.

I am following the war time nurse thread for my next link which is to Daughter of Mars by Thomas Keneally. This book is about a young woman who heads off from country Australia to the front in World War I.

Normally I try to use books I have read for these posts, but this time I am using a book I am going to read as my next link. The Wreck is by Meg Keneally, who is Thomas Keneally's daughter. They have written a historical mystery series together which I also have on my shelves, but this book is due to be released this month.

From here I kind of got stuck on the lighthouse motif, choosing Lighthouse Bay by Kimberly Freeman, because lighthouses are supposed to try and prevent wrecks, and because it is a really good book!

For my final link I chose Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman, once again because of the lighthouse, although I was trying to make a pun about preventing physical wrecks but not necessarily preventing emotional wrecks! It's a stretch though.

For this month I have travelled from an alternate world where dodos and mammoths roam to the Crimea, to the Mediterranean of WWI and then to the Australian coast. Where have your links taken you?

Next month's starting point is The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.