It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up.
This month the challenge was to begin with a book you’d previously finished a chain with. I’m rewinding to May 2019 and my starting point is I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe.
There were so many directions I could have gone with this novel – campus-lit; another winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction award; books that I read pre-blogging that I plan to reread… instead, I’m linking to another of Wolfe’s books – From Bauhaus to Our House – it’s a book about the history of architecture in America and seems quite a departure from his novels.
Naomi Wood’s novel, The Hiding Game, is set in Germany in 1922, in the Bauhaus School. I still haven’t read it (despite ticking all the boxes on a list of Things I Like in a Story), and it sits in my TBR stack alongside another by Naomi Wood – Mrs Hemingway.
There are dozens of obvious links to Mrs Hemingway of the historical-literary-figures kind, but instead I’ll focus on the theme of love triangles and a recent read that had multiple love triangles – Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky.
A swimming pool is at the centre of Dermansky’s story, as it is in Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home.
Swimming Home takes place in a villa on the French Riviera – on that basis, a link to Fitzgerald or Hemingway is obvious, but instead I’m choosing a different kind of classic – Imogen by Jilly Cooper, which is also set in a villa on the Riviera (and contains more shirtless pool boys than found in the novels of Fitzgerald and Hemingway).
From campus-lit and architecture to pools in exotic locations – where will other chains go? Link up below or post your link in the comments section.
Next month (December 5, 2020), we’ll begin with a book that is celebrating its 50th birthday this year – Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume.
