My posting continues to be irregular and erratic, but things are looking up, and we are coming to the end of the BIG DECLUTTER. I really hope to get back to reading more books, and writing more posts very soon – and, to reading all the other blog posts that I’ve been so neglecting. Meanwhile, let’s move on from, and get onto Six Degrees. If you don’t know how it works, please check host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.
The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In June, it’s yes another book I haven’t read, Elizabeth Day’s Friendaholic: Confessions of a friendship addict. It sounds like a book I would enjoy because friends have always been a very important part of my life, but do I need to read a 400+ page book about friendship? Probably not right now, but I’d be interested to read some reviews by bloggers who do read it.
It’s a while since I’ve done Six Degrees title poem but Elizabeth Day’s Friendaholic seemed to be asking for it – and, I could do it in the time I had available. Hope you enjoy. (Links on the titles are to my reviews).
Friendaholic
Mrs Spring Fragrance,
Warming the core of things
In certain circles,
But now, Summer’s gone,
And we’re Paris dreaming
For A stolen season.
With thanks to the authors of my chosen works – Edith Maude Eaton, Elizabeth Harrower, Norma Krouk, Charles Hall, Anita Heiss and Rodney Hall. All are Australian, I’ve just realised, except for Edith Maude Eaton. She was an English-born Chinese American writer who wrote under various names including Sui Sin Far. The work of hers I’ve linked here is a Library of America published short story, hence no book cover.
Now, the usual: Have you read Friendaholic? And, regardless, what would you link to?
Whispering Gums 
Poetry!
Well done!
Thanks Lisa … this one went quite easily though I made a sudden change in the morning when I realised I had made a serious boo-boo re a double meaning in a title.
Of course I haven’t read it. When have ever read it? I am an abject failure at reading the books Kate chooses!
Me too and it’s getting more so. Not one this year.
I have not read Friendaholic, and dislike coinages of that sort. There are very many books on friendship, I suppose going back beyond Cicero’s “De Amicitia”, and most of them much shorter than 450 pages.
Anyway, degree one shall be In Love with Daylight: A Memoir of Recovery by Wilfrid Sheed, since one of the recoveries was from alcohol and pill abuse, during which he belonged to Alcoholics Anonymous, ergo was a “friend of Bill W.”
One of Sheed’s other recoveries was from a bout of polio, so degree two is Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, in which a leading character is much hindered by polio.
The leading characters of Crossing to Safety get a year in Florence, thanks to the grants that were easily come by in the American 1950s. So degree three shall be Middlemarch by George Eliot, in which several of the main characters turn up in Rome, one of them studying painting one I think just studying.
But most of Middlemarch takes place in England, and it includes an election held during the early days after the Reform Act. So degree four is Coningsby by Benjamin Disraeli, which has a couple of elections in it of about the same period.
Coningsby also has a horse race. It is cross-country, but still degree five is the novella Old Mortality by Katherine Anne Porter, even though the horse race it includes is on a flat track.
At the time Miranda, the character whose point of view dominates Old Mortality, sees the horse race, she is a student at (or as she likes to say, “immured in”) a convent in New Orleans. Degree six therefore will be The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, since the protagonist gets her schooling in a convent in the West Indies (though as I recall she is not a boarder).
When I saw Old Mortality, George, I thought it was going to be sir Walter Scott’s. I haven’t read Porter’s.
I enjoyed your chain, not least because I’m familiar with many of the books, including Crossing to safety. I’m very fond of Stegner. And the Rhys is unforgettable.
Thanks as always for playing along.
You’re welcome, and thank you for your good words.
My copy of Porter’s Old Mortality is in a paperback with Pale Horse, Pale Rider, which I believe you have mentioned here, and Noon Wine.
So it’s not as long as Scott’s novel then!
Love the poetry and impressed that could retrieve those titles and create such a well flowing text. I’ve not heard of the friendaholic novel, but it does remind me of that age after travelling the world as a 20 something and meeting so many people I wanted to stay in contact with, that one reaches a point of impossibility and it is the beginning of a drifting off of friendships that aren’t oxygenated.
I hope you get back to more reading and blogging post decluttering, that’s a tough job, so many small yet potentially heavy decisions involved, unless you’re able to be ruthless and unsentimental.
Oh, and I’d link to My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.
Oh, that’s a good one Claire.
Thanks Claire. I’ve done these a couple of times before, and enjoy the challenge. I’m pretty happy with how this one flows.
Yes, good point re friendships being oxygenated.
No, I can’t be ruthless and unsentimental, so yes, it’s a hard job, but we are getting there.
What a clever way to approach the challenge! I know none of these choices, but now I’m tantalised.
I had a whole different chain worked out Margaret, and then decided it would take me quite a while to write up, so wondered if I could do a poem instead. Not sure that it’s quite within the rules of the meme, but it’s in the spirit, though the links are more “poetic”!
It’s a great idea. Which I may imitate one day, and you know what they say about its being the sincerest form of flattery.
Always happy to be imitated Margaret!
😉
A lovely little poem! I have tried many variations of Six Degrees, but not sure I have it in me to write poetry…
I love that you think I do! But this and the odd limerick are the extent of my ability stargazer!
Love the poem! Are you all moved into the new place yet or are you still in between?
Thanks Stefanie – ALMOST THERE!