It’s time for #6Degrees and truly, it’s easy to play (no rules, just bookish fun) – join in!
This month’s chain begins with Nick Hornby’s memoir (or love letter to soccer), Fever Pitch.
I read Fever Pitch when I was at uni and it was my introduction to ‘lad-lit’. At around the same time I read He Died with a Felafel in His Hand by Australian author John Birmingham. It’s also a memoir (about living in share houses in Brisbane).
Felafel leads me to Skippy Dies by Paul Murray – because Skippy dies with a doughnut in his mouth.
Mario was my favourite character in Skippy Dies – so much talk, so little action (on account of his mere 14 years). I suspect Mario wants to grow up to be Eric, from The Deep Whatsis by Peter Mattei.
The drug-and-alcohol fueled Deep Whatsis made for exhausting reading, as it did in Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis.
Imperial Bedrooms includes one of the most repulsive, graphic scenes I’ve ever read in a fictitious book. I actually had to put the book down. Which reminds me of most of Easton Ellis’s notorious 1991 best-seller, American Psycho.
Remember how American Psycho was sealed in plastic and only available from behind the counter at the book shop? As was Madonna’s coffee-table book, Sex? So very nineties.
It feels a bit wrong to have started with Nick Hornby’s sentimental soccer memories and to be finishing with smutty Easton Ellis and Madonna but that’s #6Degrees. I wonder where other chains will lead?
Next month (April 1, 2017), the chain will begin with Emma Donoghue’s bestseller, Room.
Save
Save