Six Degrees of Separation is hosted by Kate, who each month decides on a starting book, from which everyone builds a chain of six books. Feel free to join in and post your link here.
Starting point: Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
How do the choices we make impact our lives? Will some aspects play out, just in different variations, no matter which path we take? After all, our personality and drive may exist independently of whom we meet? In Rodham, Cittenfeld imagine what Hillary’s life might have been, if she hadn’t married Bill Clinton.
1. Becoming by Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama’s life would undoubtedly have played out differently, if she hadn’t met Barack Obama. But it is obvious from Becoming that Michelle would have found a way to make a difference, even if she hadn’t become the first lady.
2. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Like Michelle Obama, Carole from Girl, Woman, Other has drive, ambitions and talent and despite of having the odds against her she manages to secure a good education and a lucrative job. Both Michelle and Carole have often experienced being the only woman and the only coloured person in the room. That hasn’t in any way held them back.
3. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
But what if you – on your way to success – feel the need to leave some of your identity and roots behind? Carole from Girl, Woman, Other does to some extent deny her Nigerian roots in her strive for success. Stella in The Vanishing Half takes it even further – despite of her African heritage she chooses to live her life as a white woman. It turns out this choice comes with a high price.
4. The Memory Police by YΕko Ogawa
No matter how we decide to live our lives, our past, our memories and our roots are an important part of who we are. The Memory Police explores that connection by looking at our loss of identity, when our memories are gradually taken away from us.
5. The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
In The Memory Police, the loss of memories is highly mysterious. But people in real life do lose memories, which clearly affects their identity. The Keeper of Lost Things plays with the themes of losing stories due to Alzheimer’s, but also finding stories by tracking down the owners of lost things and discovering the story surrounding the lost item.
6. Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
In Night Train to Lisbon, Raimund Gregorius finds stories as well, in this case about Amadeu de Prado, the author of a book, Raimond picks up in an antiquarian bookshop. Incidentally, de Prado’s book ponders the philosophical issue of going back in time and making various different choices, resulting in a completely different life. Thereby bringing us right back to Rodham.
This is a first for me! I’ve actually read – and enjoyed – three of your chain links: Evaristo, Hogan and Mercier. This suggests to me I ought to try the others too.
Welcome to Six Degrees! It’s always nice to see new participants. π Three out of six – that is a decent overlap. I often see chains, where I haven’t read any of the books. I can definitely recommend the remaining three. The Vanishing Half, which I recently finished, was surprisingly readable and I almost couldn’t stop, once I started.
I love your focus. I’ve only read The Memory Police which I enjoyed hugely, but have the Evaristo and Pascal Mercier on my shelves somewhere.
Thanks Annabel, it’s always interesting how the starting book induces a certain type of chain. I certainly had no plans to keep any specific focus when starting out. I hope you get to the Evaristo at some point. There has been a lot of hype around this book, but honestly I think it is well deserved.
Btw. I tried to leave a comment over at your chain, but it might have gone into cyberspace (or into the spam filter, or just awaiting moderation π ). In any case, I loved the approach you are using for this month’s chain and I would happily cheer with you!
I was waiting to see who would link Rodham to Becoming and here you did it first! Nicely done, too!
Haha, I know, it was almost too obvious. But hey, someone had to do it! π Thanks Davida.
Terrific chain. Loved your focus!
Thanks Theresa! π
Great chain… perfect first link. I have just bought The memory police for my brotherβs birthday, but I really want to read it myself! I really want to read Brother Bennet soon, too.
Thanks! I hope your brother will enjoy The Memory Police and that you get the chance to read it as well. It really is an interesting and very unusual story, which kept haunting me a while after I read it.
I do too, stargazer, as I like Japanese fiction so this particularly interests me.
Great selection! I really want to read The Memory Police and The Vanishing Half π
Thanks Callum, both of these are definitely worth reading. For some reason, I always have low expectations to very popular books such as The Vanishing Half, but I really enjoyed it!
I know what you mean! I often wait a while for the hype around a popular book to die down before I pick it up.
Before I started blogging, I always waited a while with the popular books, but now I occasionally get caught up in the hype. The joys of book blogging! π
Well, if we were to abbreviate this list of books in the order in which one begets the other; BGTTTN that sounds pretty much like begotten, no?
Haha, yes you are absolutely right. I can assure you there are no hidden meanings, though! π
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Six Degrees post, and this was so much fun!! I love the link you made between Carole from Girl, Woman, Other and Stella from the Vanishing Half.
I am glad you liked it! Six Degrees is such a fun meme, I love coming up with the connections. Ah yes, you’ve read both books, haven’t you, so you could probably spot that link as well. Of course Stella took it to the extreme.
I can see why you like it, and I might join the meme next time!! I read both of those books, but don’t know that I would have made the same connection on my own – that’s part of what is so cool about this meme!!
Ooh, I would love to see your chain! Part of the fun is to read the chains other bloggers come up with, they are always widely different. I don’t participate every month, but I will definitely check your blog to see if you decide to join in!
I like your focus on memory – The Memory Police, sounds scary. I have two of these books on my TBR list – Becoming and The Keeper of Lost Things – I hope I’ll get round to reading them soon!
Thanks Margaret. The Memory Police was quite scary – in an eerie, understated and very Japanese way. I hope you will enjoy The Keeper of Lost Things and Becoming. If you like audiobooks, I can highly recommend to listen to Becoming. It definitely adds an extra dimension since it’s narrated by the author herself.
Great choices and always a delight when the chain loops back on itself – bravo!
Thanks, it’s quite fun when you end up with a circular chain. This time, I must admit, it was by coincidence rather than by design.
That’s ever better!
I’ve been seeing The Memory Police all,over the place and have added it to my list. And how lovely to end in Lisbon, one of my favourite cities.
I hope you’ll enjoy The Memory Police. In my opinion it was quite unique and surprising as well. I’ve only spent 1 day in Lisbon, but from what I saw, it seems like a lovely city. Hopefully, I can go back one day.
Brilliant! Love the themes you have going here. As you might remember, I hadn’t got a clue where I was going with mine but I got something together in the end. Now to add to my frighteningly long list several of these you’ve included. And remind myself to bump up the others, most of whom are already on said list somewhere!
Thanks Sandra, I am pleased to assist in keeping your TBR alive. We wouldn’t want you to run out of books to read! π Now I am curious about what you came up with, so I’ll be over in a minute.
Such an interesting focus and theme. Memory and story are becoming so important now as I age. These are books i will be checking out, especially the last one.
Thanks! I guess, memories are important for all of us, but most likely we spend more time thinking back, the older we get. I hope you’ll enjoy the Mercier book, if you decide to read it. There is much to think about, although I did find it a bit slow.
Thank you for this great chain! You’ve hit all my sweet spots: “identity, memories and stories.”
You are welcome! These themes are definitely amongst my favourites in the literature as well, which may be why I managed to do a full chain around them.
I chose Barack instead of Michelle as my first link. I’ve been seeing The Memory Police around a lot lately. I’ve only read The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa but I remember how beautifully it was written. I’ll get to more of her books one day!
Actually, The Memory Police was the first Ogawa I read. It was written before The Housekeeper and the Professor, but only translated recently. I definitely mean to read the latter at some point and I hope you will enjoy The Memory Police if you decide to pick it up.
I enjoyed your chain, thanks for sharing
You are welcome!
What a great chain of books! To be honest, this is the first time I’ve heard of Six Degrees of Separation, and I like the idea so much!
Thanks so much Aleks. I agree, it’s such a fun idea! If you should ever feel like joining in, this meme always go ahead on the first Saturday each month. You can see the starting book over at Kate’s.
Did you get the chance to Michelle Obama’s book being turned into a Netflix movie? It seemed so interesting, making me want to get around to her book sooner rather than later hahah
I heard about the Netflix movie, but haven’t watched it. The book is always better??! π§ I can confirm it’s an interesting memoir. Michelle’s time as the first lady is the least of it, I loved learning about how her childhood formed her to the person she became and all the different initiatives she worked on before moving into the white house.
Thanks for the reminder of Night Train to Lisbon – I remember enjoying it quite a lot, though I must admit I now seem to have forgotten everything else about it! I have another of his, Perlmann’s Silence, buried in the depths of the TBR – have you read it?
You are welcome! To be honest I don’t remember much detail about Night Train to Lisbon either, just enough to be able to link it. I haven’t read Perlmann’s Silence. I just looked it up – it sounds like one I would either love to bits due to my fascination of the human mind and existential issues or alternatively seriously struggle with and start regularly checking how many pages are left (when I do that, it’s really bad). Hope you are doing alright – are you in the Glasgow area? Thought I saw there was another lockdown… π
Yes, the lockdown has just been extended out as far as me yesterday, but the number of cases is still quite low, so I’m hoping we’ll manage to stop it getting out of control again… π
Fingers crossed! Good to hear the number of cases is still low.
I like you chain very much! Girl, Woman, Other sounds good0–thanks for the introduction.
Thanks! π I found Girl, Woman, Other an excellent read. Last year it won the Booker Prize (together with Atwood’s The Testaments). I don’t always get along with the prize winning novels, but in this case I thought it was well deserved.
Great chain! And I loved the way you used the themes and tied it all together.
Thanks! π Sometimes a theme just materialises out of these chains. Trust me – I didn’t have any plans when starting out.
Wow you even made a loop, that’s so great! It’s not what I’m used to read but I heard such praise about Becoming by Michelle Obama that I’m a little curious about that one!
Haha, yes it ended up in a loop, but it was by coincidence and had nothing to do with me being clever π . Becoming was a great and very inspirational book. I know you struggle with audiobooks, but you should try to listen to an extract. Michelle Obama’s narration really adds an extra dimension. You can hear from her voice how she felt, when Trump took over in the White House.
I love this chain! Girl, Woman, Other is has been one of my absolute favourite reads this year.
The Memory Police sounds completely intriguing.
Thanks, I’m glad to hear that! π Yes, mine too, it really was a well-written story with a bunch of amazing characters. I can definitely recommend The Memory Police especially if you like novels, which are a bit different.
What a great post! Iβve never heard for this until now and thank you for sharing! I see Memory Police again. I must get to it soon! I enjoyed The Vanishing Half and Rodham! π
Thanks! π I find it’s good fun to do this meme and to think about connections between books. Oooh, you read Rodham. So far it seemed to me that a lot of people know of this book, but few have actually read it! π I loved The Vanishing Half as well.
Choices choices choices…. Some good ones, some not as much. Clever way to link your books! Well done!
Happy September and here’s my 6 Degrees of Separation Sep 2020
Yes, absolutely – if we just knew the consequences of our choices before we made them… Thanks! π
I love it when you do these! Even more fun is that Iβve read three of these books recently! Well, Rodham has about an hour to go, but I recently finished Becoming on audio and I read The Vanishing Half back towards the beginning of summer. I often thought of Becoming while reading Rodham. Have you read all of these, Stargazer? You did an amazing job with this, as always.
Oh, you have (almost) read Rodham! I hope you will post about it. After finding your amazing review of Circe on Goodreads, I realised, I may be missing out on a lot of great reviews from you, because you don’t post them on your blog.
Anyway, I haven’t read Rodham, but I am keen to know your thoughts on it. I loved both Becoming (I did audio as well) and The Vanishing Half. Thanks! π
This one will probably be an instagram review (this publisher prefers those…). If I remember I will try to send you the link to it. It will also be in the sidebar on my blog where my most recent instagram posts show, but thatβs not easy to keep up with (you shouldnβt have to stalk my blog! π) I have about 50 minutes to go and the ending has me so nervous and excited!
Ah ok, I am not on Instagram or any social media π± (haha, yes – it is possible) but I will keep an eye on your blog to see if a link should appear. Oh, now you are making me really curious! I hope the last 50 minutes and the ending will live up to your expectations. π
That’s an excellent chain! I’ve only read Becoming, but I can’t wait to get Rodham x
Thanks Meggy! It seems quite a few people will be reading Rodham. I can’t wait to read all the reviews (not sure, I am going to read the book myself, but I’ll wait and see what other bloggers think).
I love these posts – I must get organised and join in! Great chain and I can’t wait to finally get round to Rodham.
Oh, I hope to see you participate some time. It always goes ahead the first Saturday of the month, but of course you can post later if you prefer. There are very few rules in this meme!