Woo hoo, a new year – and a Happy New Year to you all – but our old-faithful Six Degrees meme continues on. I’d like to thank Kate for keeping on with this meme as it’s the only one I like to do, and I do like being part of the Six Degrees community. Now having done that little bit of emotional blackmail, on with the show … as always, if you don’t know how the #SixDegrees meme works, please check Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.
The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, it’s another book I haven’t read. I did buy it with the best of intentions when Kate announced it, but then forgot to bring it to Melbourne with me. The book is last year’s Booker Prizewinner, Samantha Harvey’s Orbital. As most of you surely know it is a novella about six astronauts orbiting the earth in their spacecraft.
I had many thoughts about this one, starting with another prize-winning novella with a single-word title, Arboreality. However, in the end I chose another novel about confined protagonists, though in this case it’s one confined protagonist. The book is Amor Towles’ A gentleman in Moscow (my review), whose aristocratic protagonist is under house arrest in a hotel in Moscow (in Bolshevik Russia).
Towles’ novel is an intriguing book. Why did an American investment banker write such a book. Towles, whether you believe him or not, said he had no central theme. He simply wanted to create a work that would be “satisfyingly cohesive” but “prompt varied responses from reader to reader, and from reading to reading.” One of my responses was that the novel belonged at least in part to the comedy-of-manners tradition – and, no, I am not linking to Jane Austen but to another recent-ish comedy-of-manners, Madeleine St John’s The women in black (my review).
Setting is my next link, because The women in black is set in a Sydney department store. Kim Kelly’s Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room (my review) is also set in a Sydney department store, albeit three decades earlier, in the 1920s.
OK, so now my next link might irritate some, but Kim Kelly’s name is alliterative on “K”, and so is my next author Kirsten Krauth. I’m linking to her debut novel just-a-girl (my review). GoodReads describes it as “A Puberty Blues for the digital age, a Lolita with a webcam”. It’s one of the first novels I read that looked at social media and its (potentially dangerous) use by teenage girls.
My next link picks up on the issue of the digital age and its impact on our lives, though Sebastian Smee‘s main interest is our inner lives. I’m linking to his Quarterly Essay, “Net loss: The inner life in the digital age” (my review). Among many things, he talks how modern digital media encourages children to “present performative versions of themselves online”, which links nicely with Krauth.
However, it’s the inner life issue that is the basis of my final link. The reason I read Smee’s essay is because it inspired a member of my reading group to recommend we read Anton Chekhov’s short story “The lady with the little dog” (my review). As I wrote in my Smee post, Chekhov’s Gurov discusses his inner and outer lives, making clear that the inner life is where “everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people”. This is the inner life that Smee explores.
So, we’ve gone from outer space to inner lives this month! And my links have been three male and three female authors. We’ve spent time in some confined spaces, and, without planning it, I started and ended in Russia.
Have you read Orbital and, regardless, what would you link to?
Whispering Gums 
Don’t be ridiculous, woman ! [grin]
Got a real true challenge for yer, ST: create all your links WITHOUT explaining them, and see if we can guess ’em !!
Oh that’s a good one MR … then I could do an answer post a day or so later.
But you couldn’t be too high-falutin’, you know … [grin]
Haha, no – nor relate to personal things like, you know, the book my reading group read before or after the book. I’d try to give you all a fighting chance without being all about title and author!
Yes, why NOT from outer space to the inner world.
For a very interesting sighting of the inner world, I suggest you have a look (when it comes out earlyish in 2025) the new biography of Joan Lindsay – by the marvellous Brenda Niall. Picnic at H R was fashioned from the inner life of JL in two weeks. TWO WEEKS
Oh thanks for that heads up Carmel … I will look out for it. How interesting! Two weeks is astonishing. And as you say Niall is a great biographer.
Ohhh, I like that link between the first two. And, side-note, I’ve been tempted to try the series of AGiM but haven’t gotten to it yet. Do you know anyone who’s watched it?
Thanks Marcie … I love that you like my first link.
And no, I haven’t re AGiM. I don’t always gravitate to adaptations, but I think I’d be interested in this. It took me a while to watch Lessons in chemistry, but I’m glad I did as I though it did a pretty good job – and it was watchable though Mr Gums didn’t like the Title Sequence. (Forgotten why because I rather liked it.)
Degree one will be The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, a somewhat unreliable account of the early US space program.
Degree two will be Flights of Passage by Samuel Hynes, a memoir of WW II service as a pilot in the USMC. I include this because John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, also served in Marine aviation in that war.
Degree three will be The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (Titan being a moon of Saturn). This is essentially a sci-fi version of Candide. I include this on the grounds that Hynes became a professor of literature, and that Vonnegut was likewise a veteran of WW II, if in another service and theater.
Degree four is Orlando Furioso by Lodovico Ariosto, as likewise satyrical, and including a visit to the moon in Canto 34. (The moon serves as a giant lost-and-found, it seems.)
Degree five is Plato’s Timaeus, as offering an up-close view of the machinery of the concentric spheres then taken to hold the sun, moon, planets, and stars.
Degree six is Cicero’s Scipio’s Dream, which also gives a picture from the heavens.
As always George you offer some different perspectives …. Of course I know most of your writers but have not read any of these books, though we did see the movie, The right stuff.
Hi Sue, I have not read Orbital. Yesterday, I nearly picked it off the one week loan shelf at my library. I picked another two. My links are The Seventh Day by Yu Hua; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams; What You can see from Here by Mariana Leky; The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan; Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller, and Beautiful World Where Are You? by Sally Rooney.
Oh good ones Meg … of these The illuminations by O’Hagan pops out to me as something of interest, though all of them besides Adams which I’ve read appeal.
Great chain and I like the idea of outer space and inner minds!
Here’s mine for this month: https://portobellobookblog.com/2025/01/04/6degrees-of-separation-for-january-2025-from-orbital-by-samantha-harvey-to-devorgilla-days-by-kathleen-hart/
Thanks Joanne … I thought that was funny when I realised what I had done!
That’s a fascinating chain. I loved A Gentleman in Moscow but would never have thought of linking it to Orbital – very clever!
Thanks Helen … am glad you like that link. I enjoyed coming up with it.
Oh, now that’s interesting… confined spaces for the first link. I’d never have thought of that one. By the way, I like the sound of both the books set in shops.
Thanks Davida … I actually had a couple of confined space options. Another one was one of those house party books.
I think you’d enjoy the shop-set books. Madeleine St John’s is probably the easiest one to get as it has been republished in recent times. Kelly’s is with a small publisher here in Australia.
Great chain, Kim Kelly is one of my favourite authors I’m so glad her book managed to give you a link for this chain.
Oh that’s great Claire. I knew she’d written a bit, but hadn’t read her before. I attended a conversation with at the book’s launch and I enjoyed what she had to say about her writing life.
I’ve read all her books except one I think, but I have that on my shelf and my kindle waiting. I’d read anything she wrote.
Oh wow, you really are a fan. I’d love to know, then what you think about this novella – how different or similar you think it is.
I loved this novella, I think all of her novels and novellas are great and all pretty different other than great writing. I am always immersed in the characters and places she writes about. I’ve reread a few of them and always enjoy them just as much. What did you think of this novella?
I liked it … I particularly liked the historical setting and that idea of the ladies rest and writing room. And I liked the post-war history aspects too – its impact on both the young women’s lives. They were the big takeaways for me. The plot was probably the least interesting part of it for me. But I’ll never forget the whole concept of that room!
Well, I hope you give her others a try 🙂
She’s higher on my list … btw your blog doesn’t seem to be linked on your name. Have you chosen that approach? It makes it easier for people who like what you say to find you. I had to do a search to find your blog again.
I have no idea how to do that
I will email you to discuss it as it’s worth knowing… but I’m at a motel now so will wait till I get my laptop out.
I’ve added my web address not sure if that makes a difference
Yes … that’s how you do it!
So does it link now? I can’t tell.
Yes …. If you click on your name at the top of the comment it takes us to your blog. That’s what you want to happen. Click on your name for earlier comments and it doesn’t.
Ok cool because it doesn’t take me anywhere lol
What? That’s weird … I click on your name in earlier comments and nothing happens but on the last couple, clicking goes to your blog! That should be the same for everyone!
Very well done! I’m adding Women in Black and Kim Kelly’s to my tbr–both sound like my kind of book.
Haha, thanks Lisa … your tastes must be similar to Davida’s. They are both enjoyable and very readable books.
We read & like a lot of the same books.
Oh cheeky linking there with the K-K alliteration! I have read Orbital and while it was good, I don’t understand what all the fuss over it is about. Regardless, my first instinct is to link to something else in space but in this case, the ship itself is conscious, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice comes to mind as well as Becky Chambers’ Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. From Leckie I could jump to the fall of empires and from Chambers to beings who are considered illegal. So many possibilities!
And great possibilities too Stefanie … thanks as always! I like the idea of the dice ship being conscious.
BTW my brother felt the same about Orbital. Enjoyed it but not as winner
Confined space is a great idea! I stuck to space and nearly ran out of inspiration.
I loved A Gentleman in Moscow. Our mothers were college classmates and he attended a rival school I drive by often so I have been aware of him for a long time. Perhaps erroneously, I thought he was inspired by great authors – Fitzgerald for Rules of Civility, Tolstoy for Gentleman, and Twain for The Lincoln Highway (I am not a big Twain fan but still enjoyed this book). I haven’t read the newest book, which I think is two novellas.
The Kim Kelly book sounds interesting but has not been published in the US. I enjoy books set in department stores!
Happy New Year!
I haven’t read these, but fun links!
Thanks … I’m not surprised given most of these are pretty local Aus!
It’s always nice to find chains where I haven’t read a single book but it’s also a joy to find some that share at least one book with me. In this case, it’s A Gentleman in Moscow. Fantastic book.
Here is my list:
https://momobookblog.blogspot.com/2025/01/six-degrees-of-separation-orbital.html
Yes, exactly Marianne … I think a chain where you know one book grounds it a bit.
In this case it was one of my favourite books from the last years, just brilliant.
Thanks for letting me know
It does if I go through google but not through the stupid jetpack app
Ah yes … the Jetpack app! All bets off when we talk that!
Lol it’s taken me a while to navigate when writing posts,but I still have to get on the computer to make the pictures the size I want.
I don’t write posts in the app … find it too difficult … but I often check comments/notifications in the app.