My favourite monthly tag, hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps.
Links in the titles will take you to my reviews where they exist. This month our starting book is:
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
A book I’ve not read, but one which comes recommended by many including Rebecca, it’s on my wishlist and I’ll look out for it in the library. A ‘what if?’ alternate history, it imagines if Hill hadn’t married Bill. I so hope that American voters come to their senses in the upcoming elections – Hillary was certainly robbed last time, and the USA got you-know-who. So, for my links this month, I’m going to lead a cheer for the lady who should have won. Give us an…
R – Ragnarok by AS Byatt
For her contribution to the Canongate Myths series, Byatt retells Norse myths from a child’s point of view – A thin young girl is evacuated during WWII. She is missing her father and struggling to understand her enforced relocation. One day she is given a copy of an old book about the Norse myths, and it transforms her life, allowing her to transport her worries and make sense of everything. All of life is to be found in Asgard and the Gods (a real book, that Byatt herself loved reading as a child too.
O – Outlandish Knight by Minoo Dinshaw
This super intense and chunky biography of Byzantine scholar Steven Runciman shouldn’t have worked for me – but it did, strangely. Runciman’s life spanned almost the entire 20th century, and he was extremely well-connected – he knew everyone who was anyone it seems – he went to Hollywood as a historical advisor on a film in the 1950s. So the history was leavened with name-dropping and made the book an entertaining as well as educative read. This book was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writers Award in 2017, the year I was on the Shadow Judges panel. I got to meet its author, Minoo, who was delightful!
D – Deadland by William Shaw
William Shaw is one of my favourite crime authors, and his series featuring DS Alexandra Cupidi are superb. Set in Kent around the flatness of Dungeness and the marshes, Shaw’s sense of place is brilliant. He is also great at integrating issues of the day into his plots. This one goes from the Turner Contemporary art museum in Margate to two young teenage layabouts being on the run for their lives when they steal a mobile from the wrong man.
H – Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment
This is a smart and witty New York novel about dogs and downsizing, featuring one weekend in the life of an ageing couple and their beloved old dachshund, Dorothy. Ruth and Alex are loveable and crotchety; Ruth frets, Alex wise-cracks – Ciment portrays them well without too much sentimentality. For me, however, the star of this charming novel was Dorothy, who has her own very real perception of everything that’s happening to her. A lovely book.
A – All the Wicked Girls by Chris Whitaker
It was a relief to find that Whitaker’s second novel was as good as his first. All the Wicked Girls has a large ensemble cast who display all the traits you expect in small-town America, Alabama this time. High school girls have been going missing, Summer Ryan is the latest and her sister Raine is on the case, together with her two best friends, Noah and Purv ‘with a u’. Whitaker alternates narration between Summer (up to the time she went missing) and the others, cleverly building up a rather different picture of what happened.
M – Moskva by Jack Grimwood
I’ll finish this month with another super thriller, set in the USSR in the mid-1980s – Mikhail Gorbachev is now in power, and the climate is changing from the Stalinist past. Into this comes Major Tom Fox, a soldier with a past, who will lead the search when the British ambassador’s daughter goes missing. The opening scene is a wonderful homage to Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith, and it continues from there to become a labyrnthine spy-crime thriller.
R-O-D-H-A-M – RODHAM!!!
My cheerleading has taken me from the Norse Gods & the company of a historian to Kent and across the pond to NYC & Alabama before ending back in the USSR.
Where would your six degrees take you?
I have Ragnarok on the TBR, I really, really must read it!
I remember it as being very good indeed – and brief – unlike her The Children’s Book which I didn’t finish.
You always do such interesting things with this meme, Annabel! I’ve not read any of these but I really ought to try Shaw seeing I know those areas of Kent, especially Dungeness, quite well.
You’d love William Shaw Kim. He’s such a good writer and a nice chap too (met him at a Book event – and he signed my big pile of his books and chatted about his music journo days).
You win Six Degrees for me this month, Annabel, both in invention and in sentiment!
Thank you! I so love thinking laterally with this meme – shoulda gone into advertising!
This is such a great idea for a way to link – well done!
Thank you. I love to find a different take on straight links.
Really clever way to do a chain Annabel! 😀
I thank you. 😀
Ah, that is so creative! I wish, I could come up with something like that. And of course I support your cheer! Good to hear William Shaw is amongst your favourite crime authors, I’m keen to try one of his books.
Wow… that was fantastic! If we ever get another six letter title to start with, I might steal this idea from you! Very creative, and I don’t know any of these books.
I’ll admit, I was struggling, then suddenly it came to me when I saw the book title going down the cover letter by letter. Thank you. 😀
I struggled too and came up with the same solution, although your post is more detailed than mine.
Great minds think alike Yvonne. 😀
How ingenious! And it makes such an interesting chain. I’ve only recently read one of William Shaw’s books – Birdwatcher, so I’m really keen to read more.
Thank you! I need to go back to The Birdwatcher. It’s the one I haven’t read.
I love your “cheerleading” idea! How fun! Outlandish Knight didn’t sound that appealing until you described it; I can see it now.
Outlandish Knight was an enjoyable slog, which isn’t to denigrate it in any way, but it was long and dense. But Runciman was so interesting and MInoo wrote it so beautifully.
Love how you spelled out Rodham with your titles! Clever chain.
Thank you. I enjoyed doing that. 🙂
I am shaking my pom poms here with you!
Great chain!
Rah Rah! 😀
What a clever, unusual way of linking the books – you are brilliant!
Thank you! 😀
Great job! An homage to Gorky Park! Wow. Heroic Measures sounds really good but where I’m at with my Mom may make it too hard to read.
Hi Anna! I think it’s very clever to do this month’s Six Degrees with the letters! Well done!
I haven’t read any of these, but a few do catch my eye.
Happy September and although I’m a bit late, here’s my 6 Degrees of Separation Sep 2020