Happy May Day, everyone, not that we celebrate it here in Australia. Still, it’s a day with some fascinating traditions so I’m at least going to mark it! And now, having done so, I will get onto our Six Degrees of Separation meme. If you don’t know how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book – and I’m sorry to say that again it’s a book I haven’t read, but it’s a good choice because it commemorates an author who died earlier this year, Beverly Cleary. The novel Kate chose is Beezus and Ramona, Cleary’s story about two sisters that went on the spawn a whole series of Ramona books.

Now, as frequently happens I considered many links for this book, and very nearly went the sisters route, but I tried to be too clever and got stuck. So, I retreated to my original plan which was to link to Martin Boyd’s A difficult young man (my review). Why, do I hear you ask? It’s simple. It was published in the same year, 1955, as Beezus and Ramona.

A difficult young man won the ALS Gold Medal in 1957. I’d like to have linked to the previous winner, Patrick White’s Tree of man but, as I read it before blogging, I’m going to go back a few more years to link to 1948’s winner, Hans Bergner’s Between sky and sea (my review). This is a rare example of a book written in Australia in the author’s original language, and translated into English for publication. I could have linked to a recent example of this rarity, Shokoofeh Azar’s The enlightenment of the greengage tree, but I used that book last month. I could have linked to a book by the translator, Judah Waten, who is also a novelist, but I haven’t reviewed him here. So …

For my next link, I’m looking at content. Hans Bergner’s novel tells the story of a group of Jewish refugees from the Nazi invasion of Poland who are passengers on an old Greek freighter looking for a new life in Australia. It’s a confronting story. Confronting in a different way, and in a different form, is Anna Rosner Blay’s hybrid biography-memoir, Sister, sister (my review). It’s the story of her Polish mother and aunt’s survival through the Holocaust and their eventual emigration to Australia.

I’m sticking with content for my next link, but am adding form as a secondary link, because Susan Varga’s Heddy and me (my review) is also a hybrid biography-memoir about surviving the Holocaust – this time a Hungarian mother and her very young daughter – and their family’s migration to Australia.

And now, I’m being completely boring, and will continue the mother-daughter hybrid biography-memoir theme to link to Nadia Wheatley’s Her mother’s daughter (my review). Nadia’s mother’s story also involves World War 2, but she enlisted as a nurse in the Australian army, so her story is very different to the previous two (and for more reasons than just this!)

There was a reason for sticking with that theme, because – and this is possibly a bit of a stretch, but I going with it – Nadia Wheatley has been involved in a project called “Going Bush” which aims to make country a focus of the school curriculum. It resulted in a book called Going Bush, which captures children’s exploration of some urban bushland along Sydney’s Wolli Creek. I haven’t read or reviewed that book, but I did recently review an Indigenous Australian written and illustrated book about country in the Sydney region, Jasmine Seymour and Leanne Mulgo Watson’s Cooee mittigar: A story on Darug songlines (my review). (Wolli Creek is in the Eora Nation, but that neighbours the Darug Nation, and their languages are related.)

So, it looks like I’ve stuck with Australian authors this month, even though we’ve travelled from our starting place in the USA, to Europe and Australia (back and forth a few times), before settling in Australia. We’ve mostly stuck to the twentieth century, although the last book is timeless. Four of my links were written by women.

Now, the usual: Have you read Beezus and Ramona? And, regardless, what would you link to?

It is now autumn here Down Under, and, like our summer, it’s a strange one – cooler and wetter than “normal”. Oops, we need to get used to the fact that in this world of change, there is no “normal” anymore, “new” or otherwise. Anyhow, ’nuff said. Let’s get onto our Six Degrees of Separation meme. If you don’t know how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book – and after a two-book run, we are back to normal (did I say that!) by which I mean to a starting book I haven’t read, Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain. It won several awards, including the 2020 Booker Prize. I’d like to read it.

Now, I considered many links for this – subject, titled for main character, Scottish setting, but in the end I’ve gone with the obvious, another Booker Prize winner. I used to read them all, but since blogging I’ve only read a handful, but I did have a choice, and the one I’ve chosen doesn’t really have any other obvious links with Shuggie Bain besides both being winners, but I’m sticking with it, New Zealander Eleanor Catton’s The luminaries (my review).

It’s an historical novel set on the goldfields of New Zealand’s West Coast, and is grand and ambitious in its conception. Somewhat less grand, but nonetheless, also an historical novel set in a mining community is South African writer Karen Jennings’ Upturned earth (my review). Inspired by a real character, it’s primarily about corrupt powerful men destroying the lives of the powerless men in their employ, and the challenge of standing up to them.

Another novel about corrupt men – in this case police and justice officials – destroying the lives of powerless others is the crime novel I read in March for Kim’s (Reading Matters) Southern Cross Crime Month, Garry Disher’s Bitter Wash Road (my review). It is set in a tiny, poor community in rural South Australia and is about a demoted police officer’s struggles to solve a crime in a situation where he doesn’t know which colleagues he can trust.

My next book is also titled for the name of a road, but it is set in one of the world’s busiest capital cities, Helene Hanff’s delightful book, 84 Charing Cross Road (my review). Now a classic, you probably know it, but if not, it comprises the charming letters between American writer and bibliophile Helene Hanff and bookseller Frank Doel of Marks & Co, a London bookshop which specialised in secondhand and antiquarian books.

For my next link, we are staying in England, and sticking with letters, this time with a classic epistolary novel, Maria Edgeworth’s Leonora (my review). Published in 1806, it lacks the subtlety of Austen’s novels, the first of which was published in 1811, but it’s interesting for Edgeworth’s exploration of English and French “sensibilities” during Napoleonic times.

And so, I’m going to stay with this time period and conclude with Caroline Moorhead’s Dancing to the precipice (my review) which is a biography of French aristocrat Henriette-Lucy, Marquise de La Tour-du-Pin-Gouvernet, from her birth in 1770 to her death in 1853. It’s a wild ride, but a fascinating story about survival in tricky political times.

So, again we’ve roamed around a bit, from Scotland to New Zealand to South Africa, over to Australia before returned to Europe where we stayed for the last three books. We time travelled a bit covering many time periods between the late 1700s to contemporary times. Five of my links were written by women.

Now, the usual: Have you read Shuggie Bain? And, regardless, what would you link to?

So our strange Antipodean summer has ended, and I, for one, am sad. How often did I, this year, get to wear my summer frocks? More often than I needed to, actually, because I hated seeing them lonely in the wardrobe. I know there are people who hate the heat, and I know that it was great to have had some good soakings of rain this year, but still … a few more hot summer days would have been appreciated. With the whinge over, I’ll get to something I’ll never whinge about, our Six Degrees of Separation meme. If you don’t know how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book – and wonder of wonders, for the second month in a row, I’ve read the starting book, Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence (my review). It wasn’t one I would normally have read, but it was a reading group choice, and like most of my reading group’s choices – because we have a great group of interesting women – I was glad I did read it. Subtitled On awe, wonder, and things that sustain you when the world goes dark, it sounds like it could be a self-help book. It is a bit, but not entirely.

So, the obvious choice for a link would be come sort of other self-help book – or memoir about surviving great odds. I suppose at a push, my next book could be seen as the latter, but it’s not really, so that’s not the linking point. The link is that, Stan Grant, the author of Talking to my country (my review), is an occasional host of ABC TV’s The Drum program for which Baird is one of the two founding hosts.

I have heard Stan Grant speak in person in an ANU/Canberra Times Literary Event, and my, was he impressive. The first such event I attended after I started blogging was back in 2010 when I heard (and saw, of course) Marion Halligan converse with the English author Sarah Waters about her latest novel at the time, The little stranger (my review). She’s quietened down a bit lately, hasn’t she?

I could then, but I’m not going to, link on authors who have quietened down. Instead I’m linking on the fact that both Waters’ novel and Shokoofeh Azar’s The enlightenment of the greengage tree (my review) deal in some way with ghosts, albeit Waters’ book is a more traditional ghost story while Azar’s ghosts are of quite a different spirit.

Azar migrated to Australia from Iran, and her novel, while not exactly autobiographical, draws from the experiences of friends and family under Ayatollah Khomeini’s dictatorial regime. Elizabeth Kuiper was much younger than Azar when she migrated to Australia – with her mother – from Robert Mugabe’s dictatorial regime in Zimbabwe. Her novel, Little stones (my review), does have an autobiographical element.

Kuiper’s protagonist and first-person narrator is 11-year-old Hannah. Another novel – or novella in this case – with an 11-year-old narrator is Nick Earls’ NoHo (my review), which is set in Los Angeles (North Hollywood if you want to know!) although Earls is very definitely Aussie.

NoHo is part of a (subtly linked, apparently) novella series by Earls, called Wisdom Tree. My last link is going to be a bit cheeky, because it draws on this idea of a novella series. I say cheeky because Nigel Featherstone’s three novellas published by Blemish Press were not originally conceived as a series. It’s just that at the end of a month’s writer’s retreat in Launceston, many years ago now, he found he had sketches for three novellas, and Blemish published all three. As NoHo is the last of Earls’ 5-book series, I’ll link to Beach volcano (my review) which is the last of Featherstone’s. Their subject matter is very different but both books are about sons and brothers – one 11-year-old, one 44-year-old – who are facing challenges in their lives! I’ll leave it at that…

So, hmm, where have we been this month. All over the shop really. While nearly all this month’s authors are Australian, or Australian-based now, they have taken us not only to Australia, but England, Iran, Zimbabwe and Los Angeles in the USA. That’s a bit of arm-chair travelling for you, though we’ve been through some rocky territory!

Now, the usual: Have you read Phosphorescence? And, regardless, what would you link to?

What a strange summer we’ve had. Last year it was fires and smoke, and this year, lower temperatures and rain. I rather like the heat, but it has been good to have a calmer time. Now though to that thing that stayed with us unchanged all through 2020, come hail or shine, come fire or covid, and that thing of course is our Six Degrees of Separation meme. If you don’t know this meme and how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, she’s chosen a book that I’ve actually read – Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the side of the road (my review)! I rather like Anne Tyler, but I bought this for my Mum not long before she died, and ended up reading it myself. The titular redhead is not what you might think.

This was a fun choice for our starting book, because I could think of all sorts of options to follow, but in the end, I decided to go with another redhead, this one in António Lobo Antunes’ The natural order of things (my review). His redhead is a real one, although there are those who have imaginings about her.

My links are hopping about quite a bit this month. The obvious one would have been Charlotte Wood’s similarly titled The natural way of things, but instead I’ve chosen another Portuguese author with a triple barrel name, José Jorge Letria and his lovely book, If I were a book (my review), which is a quirky little love letter to the book and reading.

And now, I’m using the title “If” to move to the Queensland Writers Centre and its innovative If: Book Australia program, which Im not sure is still going but was about exploring the future of the book and digital literature. One exciting project it supported was Writing black, edited by Ellen van Neerven (my review) and published as an Apple iBook.

Writing black is an anthology of new writings by Indigenous Australians. For this next link, I am using content, and choosing another innovative anthology of Indigenous Australian writing, Too deadly: Our voice, our way, our business, by a Canberra- based writing group, Us Mob Writing (my review).

I am going to stick with content again, by choosing another anthology. However, this link is a double one, because this particular anthology, The near and the far, Volume 2, edited by David Carlin and Francesca Rendle-Short (my review), comprises pieces written by another (sort of) writing group. The group is WrICE (Writers Immersion and Cultural Exchange) which brings writers from Australia and Asia-Pacific together in writing residencies.

And finally, a rather cheeky link from the writer of the Foreword of The near and the far, Maxine Beneba Clark, to her memoir of growing up in western Sydney, The hate race (my review). It’s a powerful book about how cruelly people who are different, particarly those with non-white skins, can be treated in Australia.

So, an unusual and highly political month this time, with several books having overtly political messages or content. Three of the books are anthologies, which is also unusual for me, and only the first of my six links is a novel. We have though travelled widely from Baltimore in the USA, though Portugal, Australia, Asia and the Pacific, and back to Australia again.

Now, the usual: Have you read Redhead by the side of the road (or any other by Anne Tyler)? And, regardless, what would you link to?

Woo hoo! A New Year at last after what has really been a doozy for us all, in one way or another. So glad to see the back of it. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas wherever you were and however you were able to spend it. Now though to that thing that stayed with us unchanged all through 2020, come hail or shine, come fire or covid, and that thing of course is our Six Degrees of Separation meme. If you don’t know this meme and how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, she’s chosen a book was one of many readers’ loved books last year – Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet! I haven’t read it – but what’s new? I wouldn’t be averse to reading it, I must say, because its topic of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died in his youth, sounds intriguing.

There are various directions I could go in, but I’ve chosen a pretty obvious one, a book that, like Hamnet, is historical fiction breathing life into a marginal historical figure. The book is Craig Cormick and Harold Ludwick’s On a barbarous coast (my review), and the figure, James Mario Magra. Magra was a midshipman on the Endeavour and is believed to have authored an anonymous journal about that journey. Cormick drew from that journal for his characterisation of Magra.

Staying with the coastal theme – but shifting time (to the contemporary not colonial era), setting (to southern Victoria, not Far North Queensland), and genres (to crime not historical fiction) – I’m linking to Dorothy Johnston’s Through a camel’s eye (my review). This novel introduces Constable Chris Blackie, meaning that …

… Through a camel’s eye is the first of Johnston’s latest series, her Sea-change Mysteries. I’m not, as you know, a big reader of series, but in 2020 I did read the first in another series, Steven Carroll’s The lost life (my review), which starts his Eliot Quartet series.

I’m being a bit cheeky with my next link because I’m taking us to a literary app, rather than a book, The waste land app for TS Eliot’s poem cycle of the same name (my review). This was an exciting foray into the possibilities of using apps for the reading and study of literature, but I’m not sure it has taken off. It was, I’d say, expensive to produce and may just not have got the market size they needed. A shame. (The pic here is of a book edition of the poem, not of the app!)

The Wasteland app contains many academics, writers and actors reading, critiquing and reflecting on this major poem. One of those involved was the English novelist Jeanette Winterson, so it’s to her book Oranges are not the only fruit (my review) that I am linking next.

Jeanette Winterson has quite a bit in common with our Francesca Rendle-Short, but the most relevant to my link here is that both were raised by mothers who were religious zealots. Oranges are not the only fruit is a semi-autobiographical novel, while Bite your tongue (my review) is a sort of hybrid fiction/memoir, but both cover protagonist-daughters’ struggles against highly restrictive maternal upbringings.

Coincidentally, we’ve somehow ended up on a topic – religion and God – relevant to last month’s starting book, Judy Blume’s Are you there God? It’s me Margaret.

So, this month, half of my books are by men and half by women. We haven’t travelled far, staying in Australia except for a trip in the middle to England, but we have traversed a couple of centuries. I do like how we started with the starting book’s lovely cool blue cover and ended with Rendle-Short’s fiery one. I hope that’s not telling us something about the year to come!

Now, the usual: Have you read Hamnet? And, regardless, what would you link to?

And so, suddenly, it’s December and the last Six Degrees post of the year. What will 2021 bring. This time last year we could never have imagined what 2020 was going to be for us. I hope we don’t have another one like it again, but … it’s not over yet isn it? Anyhow, on to this month’s Six Degrees of Separation meme.  But first, if you don’t know this meme and how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, she’s chosen a book that’s celebrating its 50th birthday this year – Judy Blume’s Are you there God? It’s me Margaret! I haven’t read it, though I know that Judy Blume is a huge favourite with young adults, or was, in those early days of her writing when YA was a relatively new genre.

What to do? I could go with another book celebrating its 50th anniversary, or a YA novel, but I’m going to look at questions, specifically How, What, When, Where, Why and Who, though many of my titles aren’t actually questions. They just start with a word that often starts a question. Sorry, but you’ll have to live with that, and that the links are simply from one of these words to the next! (BTW See notesinthemargin’s last six degrees post on questions in titles.)

So, HOW. Melissa Lucashenko’s essay (not Richard Llewellyn’s novel), “How green was my valley?” (my review) appeared in Griffith Review’s Hot Air issue. It’s an excellent essay that talks about climate change, indigenous Australian culture, and the possibilities of connection between Indigenous and settler Australians to save our country.

WHAT. For “what” I go to a favourite writer whom I haven’t read for a while, Haruki Murakami. I love memoirs that aren’t quite memoirs, and Murakami’s What I talk about when I talk about running (my review) is such a book. It purports to be about his running, but you learn a lot more besides.

WHEN. My next book is another memoir, but a traditional one this time, white Zimbabwean writer Peter Godwin’s When a crocodile eats the sun (my review). It’s a tough book about a tough place, Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

WHERE. This was my biggest challenge, as I’ve not reviewed any book starting with “where”. I nearly cheated and used Helen Garner’s EveryWHERE I look, but then remembered that I had suggested to Kate that we start a Six Degrees chain with Maurice Sendak’s Where the wild things are, so, why not get more mileage out of that! Otherwise, I could have used Delia Owens’ Where the crawdads sing, which my reading group has scheduled for next year.

WHY. One reason for not “cheating” with Helen Garner’s Everywhere I look, was that my “why” link was going to be Garner. It’s her powerful Walkely-award-winning essay, “Why she broke: the woman, her children and the lake” (my review). It appeared in The monthly in 2017, and is an interesting companion piece to her earlier longform work, This house of grief. (It doesn’t appear in Yellow notebook, which I’ve used here for its pic of Garner!)

WHO. Like my “How” choice, my “who” title is a real question, though the import of the question is possibly obscure. I’m talking Hartman Wallis’ Who said what, exactly? (my review). It’s a cheeky and challenging book, but, given this month’s starting book, I must share this line from one of the book’s poems:

‘Think about it God is dead …

Hmm … what would Judy Blume’s Margaret say?

So, exactly reversing my usual Six degrees posts, four of my six links here are by men. However, like last month, we have travelled a bit, to Australia, Japan, Africa and the USA. We have also considered, one way or another, quite a few questions, and have, somehow, returned to God. Seems like a good point on which to close this year’s Six degrees. Thanks, Kate, for another enjoyable set of starting books. All being well, I’ll be back in 2021.

Now, the usual: Have you read Are you there God? It’s me Margaret!? And, regardless, what would you link to?

Two months into spring here down under, and we are enjoying a wetter spring than usual. I don’t love rain, but my has it resulted in lovely spring blossoms, and we do need our dams to be filled – which they are! Now though, onto today’s business, this month’s Six Degrees of Separation meme.  As always, if you don’t know this meme and how it works, please check out meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

And the first rule, of course, is that Kate sets our starting book, and this month, as she did a year or so ago, she told us to start this month’s chain with last linked book from our last Six Degrees post, which, woo-hoo, means another starting book I’ve read!

So, the book I ended last month’s chain with was Louise Erdrich’s The bingo palace (my review), which is inspired by the fact that gambling is a major source of income for many Native American communities, a way in which they can support themselves (albeit also comes with problems).

Another community for which gambling can operate as a survival mechanism are the Koreans in Japan who run most of the Pachinko parlours in that country. This story is covered in Min Jin Lee’s originally named Pachinko (my review).

Richard Lloyd Parry’s The people who eat darkness (my review) is a non-fiction true crime work which explores the problematic position of Koreans in Japan, one which can have, as here, dire consequences.

For my next link, I’m moving from setting and subject (though am staying in Asia), to another book I read for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize shadow jury, Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village (my review).

Finally, we land in Australia, with Courtney Collins‘ historical novel The burial (my review), which was inspired inspired by the life of Jessie Hickman, an Australian woman bushranger. That, however, is not the link – obviously. The link is that both novels have dead child narrators, though Collins’ is a very young baby.

For my final link, I’m sticking with “wild” Australia, but this time with a book written at the time it is set, John Lang’s The forger’s wife (my review). It deals with the rough and tumble of life in the colony, and of course, that includes bushrangers!

As frequently happens with my Six degrees posts, four of my six links are books by women. However, we have travelled a bit this time – from America to Japan to South Korea and thence China, before finally landing in Australia. The authors have been diverse too, though the two books set in Japan were not by Japanese writers! Go figure, as they say!

Now, the usual: Have you read The bingo palace? And, regardless, what would you link to?