Woo hoo! This last month, we in Canberra, New South Wales and Victoria came out of lockdown. Vaccination rates are high, and it is still spring (here down under) so things are looking good in our neck of the woods. I sure hope it is for all of you, too.

But now, with the weather and pandemic report out of the way, let’s get onto our Six Degrees of Separation meme, which, as most of you know, is run by Kate. Check her blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest – to see how it works.

We start with the book chosen by Kate, and it is Sigrid Nunez’s What are you going through? As happens more often than not, I haven’t read it, but, among other things, it is about two friends and assisted dying.

For my first link I’m breaking my personal “Six Degrees” rule which is to only link to books that I’ve read and reviewed on this blog. My link is Helen Garner’s The spare room. It’s about two friends, one terminally ill with cancer but so desperate to not die that she engages in expensive and ultimately useless alternative therapies – to the immense distress of the caring friend. Bill has reviewed it, so here’s his, because, like me, he likes the novel!

From here, I’m linking to a memoir, which is particularly appropriate given Garner’s work falls into the autofiction genre. The book is Margaret Rose Stringer’s (M-R to those of you who read comments on my blog) And then like my dreams (my review). M-R wrote this as a tribute to the love of her life, who died from cancer. Her journey with him through life, illness and death, is beautiful to read. This link is doubly apt because M-R is a keen Garner fan.

Next, we return to fiction, but stay with the idea of grief, in Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (my review). The trigger for this book is Agnes’ grief over the loss of her son Hamnet. Most of you will know that Hamnet was Shakespeare’s only son, and Agnes is a name used by Shakespeare for his wife Anne Hathaway. The novel ends on Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.

From here we are going to another book which riffs on the backstory behind a piece of literature, though in this case rather more is known about the story. The work is Steven Carroll’s The lost life (my review). It is the first in Carroll’s “Eliot Quartet” which explores, obviously, TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. The first quartet is “Burnt Norton”, and Carroll’s novel is framed by the story of Eliot and Emily Hale, who visit Burnt Norton manor in 1934. Like Hamnet in O’Farrell’s novel, Eliot, himself, is a fairly shadowy figure in the story.

I loved TS Eliot as a student and, while his life and views have become problematic, I’m still moved by his work. I was therefore thrilled when an app appeared for another of his major works, The Wasteland (my post). This app is an impressive application of modern technology to the enjoyment and study of literature and I’m sorry that it seems not to have taken off. (I don’t have a pic of the app, so you get a print edition instead!)

However, people are exploring the use of modern online and interactive technologies for literature, and one organisation doing this is/was If:Book. (It may now be defunct, or it has transformed into something else.) Produced under its auspices was Writing black (my review), edited by Ellen van Neerven. She saw a digital-only production being “moulded by possibility”, saying that the enhancements available in such an approach “lifts the imagination”. I haven’t seen a lot of work going down this path, perhaps because most readers still love books, but I love that creators experiment with the new. It keeps the arts fresh.

So, this month we have strayed far from the beginning. I can’t see any link, as we’ve gone from death and grief to exploring the new. I think that’s a good way to be!

Now, the usual: Have you read “What are you going through”? And, regardless, what would you link to it?

Another month has gone, and we in Canberra, New South Wales and Victoria are still in lockdown. However, with vaccinations proceeding apace, the end is in sight, we hope. On the plus side, it is spring, and the blossoms are out – and daylight savings starts this weekend which I love. I know that for some of you, though, it is autumn. I hope you are having a good one. Meanwhile, let’s get onto our Six Degrees of Separation meme, which, as most of you know, is run by Kate. Check her blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest – to see how it works.

We start, of course, with the book chosen by Kate except that this month it is a short story, Shirley Jackson’s much studied, much anthologised “The lottery”. And, because it is a short story, I did manage to read it (my post).

My first link is an obvious one, another short story with a shocking ending, Kate Chopin’s “Désirèe’s baby” (my review). I’m a big Chopin fan, which started when I read her novel The awakening. Anyhow, our starting short story and this one make powerful statements about human cruelty, and both, coincidentally, start by describing lovely days!

Chopin’s story involves a baby and racism. Another book in which a baby is unwittingly related to brutal, racist behaviour is Nardi Simpson’s Song of the crocodile (my review). It’s a novel by a First Nations Australian, so its ambit extends beyond Chopin’s, but it is this baby who grows up and forces this novel’s shocking denouement.

For my next link, I thought I’d move away from grimness, except I then realised that this next book also has racism at its core! However, my link is on the author’s career, because Nardi Simpson had an established singing career before she became a novelist. The author of the book I’m linking to is also a well-recognised First Nations singer, but his book is a memoir, Archie Roach’s Tell me why: The story of my life and my music (my review).

I’m sticking with musical memoirs for my next link. It is a travel memoir by a musician who, bravely to my mind, cycled across Europe and Asia, from England to Hong Kong, with her violin. The book is Emma Ayres’ Cadence: Travels with music (my review).

Most Australians know Emma Ayres, as she was a much-loved presenter some years ago on ABC Classic FM. Most of us also know that, after she left that job, she went to Kabul and soon after that transitioned to Eddie Ayres. He wrote about this process in his book Danger music. However, I haven’t read that, but I have read Sarah Krasnostein’s The trauma cleaner (my review), an award-winning biography of a transgender woman, Sandra Pankhurst.

Now, what to end on? I think a short story might be apposite, and there is one that I read back in my first year of blogging that might fit the bill, though, back then, I gave less attention to my short story reviews than I do now. The story is Tessa Hadley’s “Friendly fire” (my post). I’m linking on the protagonists who are two middle-aged women cleaners in an industrial warehouse, Pam who owns the cleaning business and her friend Shelley who is helping her out for the day. The main focus is Shelley, and her thoughts about life and family, particularly about her son who is in the military in Afghanistan, which might give you a clue about the story’s title. I read it online, but it has been published in a collection called Married love, hence the cover I’ve used.

So, this month I have at least come full circle in terms of form. We have also travelled quite a bit, given one of the links is a a travel memoir, and we have, I’ve realised, met a few cleaners, as Nardi Simpson’s novel involves house cleaners and washerwomen. Perhaps, I’m giving myself a hint!

Now, the usual: Have you read “The lottery”? And, regardless, what would you link to it?

Little did I know when I wrote my last Six Degrees, that I would have just completed three weeks of lockdown when writing my September edition, but that’s, indeed, where I am. I am aware that among most eastern state Australians, the ACT has been relatively lucky. However, we have been feeling for some time that we’ve been living on borrowed time and that time ran out. Australia did a great job last year of suppressing the virus but the Delta variant, combined with problems in vaccine supply and delivery, left us exposed. We can only hope that … oh well, what more can I say. Let’s get onto our Six Degrees of Separation meme, which, as most of you know, is run by Kate. Check her blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest – to see how it works.

We start, of course, with the book chosen by Kate and this month it’s another book I’ve not read, Rachel Cusk’s Booker Prize longlisted Second place. I haven’t read Cusk yet but she’s been on my radar, and is even moreso now.

I haven’t, in fact, read any of the longlisted books, but I’ve read previous works by some of them, so this is where I’m going first. The author I’ve chosen is South African author, Karen Jennings. I’ve read two of her books, but as I recently linked on one of them, I’m democratically selecting the other, Finding Soutbek (my review), which I remember enjoying for adding to my knowledge and understanding of her country.

Another South African-born writer who has provided me with insights into his country, is JM Coetzee. He has also been longlisted for the Booker prize and, in fact, has won it twice. But they are not the books I’ve chosen here. That one is Diary of a bad year (my review), mainly because it’s the only one of his I’ve reviewed on my blog, although I have read a couple of others, including the unforgettable Disgrace.

Those of you who have read Diary of a bad year will know that it is quite challenging to read, not so much because of its language but its structure: it has three storylines, one running at the top, one in the middle, and the other at the bottom of each page. How do you read that? In fact, once you decide your way to read it, it’s perfectly readable. Another book that seemed confronting to read – this one because of its almost complete lack of punctuation – is Bernadine Evaristo’s Booker Prize-winning, Girl, woman, other (my review). It, too, turned out to be easy to read.

Sticking with potentially challenging books, I’m next linking to my latest read, Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize winning Shuggie Bain (my review). It is set in Glasgow, and much of its dialogue is in Glaswegian vernacular. This was off-putting for many English readers, a commenter on my post said, but I found it much easier to read than I expected, and quite musical in fact.

For my next link, we are leaving this little subterranean linking of Booker-related books, and delving back into the past with Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (my review of volume 1). I’m sure you’ve guessed my link – yes, Sir Walter Scott, like Douglas Stuart, was born in Scotland. There’s not much else to link these books on except, I suppose, that both are named for their male protagonists!

And finally, for something completely different, we are going from Waverley the novel, to a work of history that in 2014 won the previously named Nib Waverley Award (but which since 2017 has been known as the Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award.) Waverley is the name of the municipal council which manages this interesting award which focuses on research as well as writing. 2014’s winner was Clare Wright’s The forgotten rebels of Eureka (my review).

I haven’t read our starting book, so can’t comment on whether there’s much to link back to, but I think I could say that Clare Wright wrote her book because, for too long, women in history have taken second place! How does that sound?

Now, the usual: Have you read Second place? And, regardless, what would you link to it?

I love August. It’s still winter but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and when I say “light” I mean it literally as suddenly, it seems, we start to see the lengthening days. We also know that the first spring blossoms are about to give us joy. These are pluses because in fact August, September and October here can have some really cold days with winds coming off the snow … but summer! It’s not far off! Now though, I’ll get onto our Six Degrees of Separation meme, which, as most of you know is run by Kate, and explained on her blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule, of course, is that Kate sets our starting book. This month it’s a book I’ve not read, though it’s been around for a long time, Carrie Fisher’s Postcards from the edge, which was published in 1987. For some reason, I’ve always thought it was a memoir, but it’s actually fiction, albeit semi-autobiographical. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you who Carrie Fisher is, so I’ll just move on to my next link.

I can’t resist going for the obvious this time – and linking on the title – because it gives me an opportunity to share a short story collection from a favourite author, Helen Garner’s Postcards from Surfers (my review). I could cheekily suggest it’s a double link because, like much of Garner’s fiction, this collection has autobiographical elements.

When I review short story collections, I often comment on the title, because some are given an original title while others are titled for one of the stories in the collection. Garner’s collection is one of the latter, and it is on this that I am going to link, and go to Adam Thompson’s Born into this (my review). The titular story is perfect for the collection because the stories are all about the lives First Australians are born into.

It was at this point of my research for this Six Degrees that I decided to focus on short stories, so all my links will be short stories. For the next link, I’m delving into the collection. One of the bolder stories in Born into this is titled “Honey”. One of my favourite, and cheekiest stories in the Australian love stories anthology edited by Cate Kennedy (my review) is Carmel Bird’s “Where honey meets the air”.

Next I’m linking on form. By this I mean that Australian love stories is an anthology of stories by different writers versus one writer’s collection as we’ve had to this point. My next link then is to another anthology, Love on the road 2015: Twelve more tales of love and travel edited by Sam Tranum and Lois Kapila (my review). The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted another double link, this time on the theme – love.

Love on the road was published in Dublin and contains stories from around the world, so we are going to stay overseas. However, just in one place, Mumbai, and one writer, Jayant Kaikini’s No presents please (my review) which was published in Australia by Scribe. It’s so good to see small Australian publishers bringing books like this to our shores.

My last link is to a single short story, Anton Chekhov’s classic The lady with the dog (my review). Can you guess what the link is? I’ll give you some marks if you say because it’s set overseas, but I chose this particular overseas-set story because, like Jayant Kaikini’s collection, I read it in translation!

I know some of my readers here aren’t short story lovers so these links won’t thrill them much, but for the rest of you, I hope you see some collections or anthologies that you know or that appeal to you. I did my best to take us a bit around the world.

Now, the usual: Have you read Postcards from the edge? And, regardless, what would you link to?

Now we come to July, and we Aussies have one month of winter under our belt. Woo hoo! But, enough weather report, 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, as most of you know, is that Kate sets our starting book – and this month it’s a book I’ve read, albeit long before blogging. It’s Lynne Truss’s Eats shoots and leaves, whose subtitle, “The zero tolerance approach to punctuation”, tells you its subject.

As always, I had many thoughts about where to go with this, but I couldn’t resist using Truss’s dedication, which is: “to the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution”. This gave me the opportunity to link to my latest review, Steven Conte’s The Tolstoy Estate (my review), sinceone of the main characters, Katerina, was a Bolshevik supporter of the Russian Revolutions.

I love humane people who rise above the enmities that surround them to do the right thing. Conte’s doctor, Paul Bauer, is a fictional one, but a real one is Dr Izzeldin Abulaish who, in his book, I shall not hate (my review) tells of the killing of three of his daughters by Israeli Defence Force shells in January 2009 during a 23-day attack on Gaza, and his decision to not hate but to work for harmony in Palestine and Israel.

A novel which explores the twentieth century history of Israel and Palestine, looking at the early idealism and the later failures, and arguing for empathy and humanity, is Sara Dowse’s As the lonely fly (my review).

Now I’m going to do something I rarely do in this meme, which is to link to another book by the same author, to a book that will move us away from politics to the arts. The book is Sara Dowse’s Schemetime (my review). It’s about an Australian filmmaker who goes to LA wanting to make a career in the film industry.

The natural link for this is Dominic Smith’s recent historical fiction, The electric hotel (my review). It is about the early decades of the film industry, when entrepreneurs were developing cinematograph technology and touting it around the world.

The main character in Smith’s book is silent film pioneer Claude Ballard, and when the novel opens he is an old man who as been living in LA’s Knickerbocker Hotel for over thirty years. Remind you of anything? It reminded me of Amor Towles A gentleman in Moscow (my review), which is about “pre-revolutionary” Count Rostov who lives (is, technically imprisoned) for decades in Moscow’s grand hotel, Metropol.

This doesn’t link naturally back to Lynne Truss, but it does to my first link The Tolstoy Estate! Yasnaya Polyana is not a grand hotel, but it is a real place used as a setting for a novel, and Bolshevik Katerina was originally an aristocrat like our count.

So, besides that little bit of circularity, where have we been? All over the place – Russia, Israel and Palestine, America, all over the world, and back to Russia. And, reversing my usual pattern, four of my selections are by men, and two by women (the same woman, actually.)

Now, the usual: Have you read Eats shoots and leaves? And, regardless, what would you link to?

It’s June downunder – well, I suppose it’s June everywhere! – but here, downunder, June also means winter, so, wah! Oh well, the sooner it starts, the sooner it’s over! And, while we are suffering it, we can aways enjoy fun blogging things like 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, as most of you know, is that Kate sets our starting book – and I’m sorry to say that again it’s a book I haven’t read, but I love her choice because it’s this year’s Stella Prize winner, Evie Wyld’s The bass rock.

I was spoilt for choices with this starting book, in that there are several obvious links to books I’ve read, like, a previous Stella Prize winner or another book by Evie Wyld. But, I wanted to challenge myself a bit more than that, so, hmm, you probably won’t like this, but Catherine McKinnon’s Storyland (my review) opens in the voice of a young man who is employed by the explorer George Bass! Yes, I know, going from title to minor character is cheeky but it’s my blog and I wanted to remind readers of Storyland, because it’s a good read.

Storyland covers time multiple periods in Australia, including two futuristic ones, the first being 2033 when climate change has caused significant destruction resulting in people struggling to survive. Jane Rawson’s A wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists (my review) is set in two time frames, one being 2030, when climate change has wrought destruction in Australia resulting in … well, you get the gist. It’s also a good read that deserves to be remembered.

My next link is another cheeky one because we are taking a wrong turn and ending up in a doubtful position, or, should I say, in Kim Mahood’s wonderful memoir, Position doubtful (my review). It’s set in Australia’s Tanami Desert region and chronicles Mahood’s regular trips there to explore and understand her relationship to place, and how her relationship sits against that of the Indigenous owners.

We are staying in deserts for my next link but on the other side of the world. In other words we are going to the Middle East, with Jane Fletcher Geniesse’s biography, Passionate nomad: The life of Freya Stark (my review). Like Mahood, Stark spent a lot of time in the desert, and was, in fact, one of the first non-Arabians to travel through the southern Arabian deserts.

Freya Stark was a travel writer among other things, so my next link is to a writer who wrote about travel among other things, Charles Dickens. The book is a little collection of his essays on travel, titled On travel (my review)! In my review I wrote that “Reading these reminds me yet again why I love Dickens. I enjoy his acute observation of humankind and his sense of humour. He makes me laugh. Regularly. And then there is his versatile use of the English language. The man can write.”

Can you guess where we go from “versatile use of the English language” and “the man can write”, particularly given we are also talking essays? I think it’s pretty obvious, George Orwell. My link is Penguin’s Great Ideas selection of his essays titled Books v. Cigarettes. I have not reviewed the book, but I have reviewed four of the seven essays in it: “Books v. Cigarettes“, “Bookshop memories“, “Confessions of a book reviewer” and, just yesterday, “The prevention of literature“. I do love a good essay.

Last month I linked only Australian authors which I thought was a bit ethnocentric of me, so this month I did my best to leave Australia, with an American author (Geniesse) and two English ones (Dickens and Orwell) as well as three Australians. As often happens in my six degrees, four of the writers are women and two men. However, I can’t help thinking this is one of my weirder chains, but I had fun doing it.

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

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?