April already, and I am back in Melbourne to spend Easter with the family (and feed grandchildren too much chocolate probably!) But that’s a week away. Today is Six Degrees time. If you don’t know how the meme works, please check meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In April, yep, it’s a book I haven’t read – again – Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Kate calls it, Born to run. I make that point about “autobiography” because so often these days the books people write about their own lives tend to be “memoirs” but I presume Springsteen’s book covers more than a memoir typically does?

For my first link I’ve gone with something pretty obvious, a memoir with “running” in the title, Haruki Murakami’s What I talk about when I talk about running (my review). This is definitely not autobiography because it really does focus on his running. I had hoped – despite the title – for a bit more about his writing!

As I recollect, Murakami’s book takes a bit of a log-cum-diary form, so I’m going to another memoir that really is diary form, Helen Garner’s Yellow notebook: Diaries, Volume 1, 1978-1987 (my review). She is a mistress of the form and I hope to get to volume 3 next year – if life would just slow down a bit.

In her book, Garner mentions many authors whom she admires. One of these is Christina Stead, whom she calls “a visionary”. I’m linking to her novel For love alone (my review).

Christina Stead left Australia in her 20s, and made her name as a writer after she left our shores. Another Australian writer who made her name as a writer after leaving Australia is Madeleine St John, but it’s to her Australian-set novel, The women in black (my review), that I’m linking.

The women in black was adapted to film, but its title was slightly changed to The ladies in black. My next link is a bit cheeky, but not, I think, as cheeky as my last link will be. Jane Austen’s Emma (one of my posts) has been adapted several times to film and TV, but one of my favourites is the one Wikipedia describes as a ““reworking and updating”, Clueless. (Now, that’s a big change in title!)

And now for, perhaps, my cheekiest link yet! Alicia Silverstone, who starred in Clueless as Cher (the updated Emma) left the movie world and became interested in animal activism and organic eating/veganism. Australian poet/novelist/essayist/academic David Brooks wrote a memoir-cum-reflection about his journey to vegetarianism and then veganism, The grass library (my review), in which he also talks at length about his relationship with some farm animals.

So, I could argue that I’ve achieved a bit of a circle this month, taking us from Springsteen’s autobiography to Brooks’ sort-of memoir? A circle is not required for the meme, so let’s not argue the point and just move on! We have covered a lot of ground from running, to diary-writing, to Aussie expats, before taking Jane Austen over to the US and ending up on a small farm in Australia’s Blue Mountains.

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

I may as well continue my practice of talking about the weather! Here down under, autumn has started, and we in the nation’s capital at least have had a beautiful start with the warm, mild days we love autumn for. May it continue for some weeks given our non-summer. Now, to this month’s Six Degrees. If you don’t know how the meme works, please check meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In March it is YET another book I haven’t read, though I remember it well, Gail Sheehy’s best-selling self-help book, Passages. GoodReads describes it as “a brilliant road map of adult life” so, what to link?

Well, reader, I was challenged. The closest to self-help I’ve read is Julia Baird’s Phosphorescence but I’ve linked to that before. Perhaps, then, a book that spans adult life? Well, yes, I s’pose. That would certainly be doable, but, I’ve decided to go with author birth-date. Gail Sheehy was born in 1936, and so was the Australian author, Alex Miller, so it’s to his Lovesong (my review) that I’m linking.

Now, another Australian author has also written a book titled Lovesong, Elizabeth Jolley. However, I read that before blogging, so I’m going to link to one of her books I have read since and reviewed here, The orchard thieves (my review). It’s a glorious book about a grandmother thinking about her children and grandchildren, about “little rogues and thieves” who “would, during their lives, do something perfect and noble and wonderful and something absolutely appalling”.

Somehow, I’ve read a few books about orchards, and one of them is local author Karen Viggers’ The orchardist’s daughter (my review), which is set in northwest Tasmania and deals with two siblings who had grown up on an orchard, though they leave it at the beginning. It’s a strong story about life and tensions in a logging-based town.

For anyone who is up-to-date on Australian writing, the next link is so obvious I’m almost too embarrassed to make it, Robbie Arnott’s Limberlost (my review). This novel is set in a northeast Tasmanian orchard, and while it is not specifically about siblings, siblings do play a significant role. It also encompasses the issue of logging, though not as centrally as Viggers’ book does.

Now, we really need to leave Australia, because, much as I love to promote Aussie Lit, I mustn’t be too ethnocentric about all this. So, my next link is on third novels. Limberlost is Robbie Arnott’s third novel. Singaporean author Balli Kaur Jaswal’s Erotic stories for Punjabi widows (my review) is her third novel, so, short and sweet, that’s my next link.

My final link is on subject matter, as both Jaswal’s novel and Hanif Kureishi’s The buddha of suburbia (my review) deal in some way with subcontinent culture in London. Jaswal’s protagonist, Nikki, is born in England to Punjabi immigrant parents, while Kureishi’s Karim is the English-born son of a Pakistani father from Bombay and an English mother. Both characters, in different ways, have to make their way through the intersection of anglo and immigrant cultures.

So, we haven’t travelled a lot this month as we started in America with Passages, spent some time in Australia and then went to England! My author gender-split though has been 50-50 which I rarely achieve.

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

A month already into the new year, and of course I can’t believe it! Nor can I believe that I didn’t edit out last month’s opening paragraph when I published this month’s this morning, so this paragraph is different to the one that first went live! Silly me! We have just arrived in Melbourne for three birthdays, so my mind was elsewhere. Anyhow, I’ll put my red-face aside and get on with it. If you don’t know how Six Degrees works, please check meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In February it is another book I haven’t read, Hernan Diaz’s Trust. She chose it because it topped her 2022 “best of” book lists. It is about wealth and power in New York so my first thought was Tom Wolfe’s The bonfire of the vanities though I think this is a long bow in terms of the story. However, I haven’t reviewed that on my blog which is my rule-of-thumb for my links, so …

I’m going the easy route and choosing one of the two books that topped my smaller 2022 list of favourite Aussie books. Of the two, I’ve read one (the other being on my February TBR) so that read one will be my link, Jessica Au’s Cold enough for snow (my review). I’m thrilled to hear that it has just been announced the winner of the 2023 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award Prize for Literature and the Fiction Prize.

Cold enough for snow concerns a mother and daughter trip to Japan, though what it is about is something a bit different. Another daughter-mother story set in Asia, this time Korea, and told from the daughter’s point-of view, is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho (my review), so that’s my next link.

Dusapin’s narrator comes across as a bit of a misfit, as one who seems unwilling to follow the expectations of her community. She reminded me, in this sense, of the protagonist of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience store woman (my review). In fact, I’m not the only one who felt this connection because the GoodReads intro to Winter in Sokcho describes it “as if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman“.

My next link is a bit cheeky, but Murato’s protagonist, Keiko, works, obviously, in a convenience store. Nardi Simpson, in her Song of the crocodile (my review), writes of one of her protagonists that “with guts and confidence, Celie turns her mother’s laundry skills into a business called the Blue Shed, providing work for herself and the other women”. Now, while a laundry isn’t technically a convenience store, I reckon it is a very convenient service, so that’s good enough for me.

In Song of the crocodile, the crocodile is a totemic being who becomes angry when things in the town go far too awry for it to be tolerated any more. Peter Godwin’s memoir, When a crocodile eats the sun (my review) also invokes a crocodile being. As I wrote in my post, ‘The title comes from an old Zulu and Venda belief that a solar eclipse occurs when a crocodile eats the sun. They see it as the worst of omens, “as a warning that he [the celestial crocodile] is much displeased with the behaviour of man below”‘. (Of course, I could have just said that I was linking on the word in the title but that would be too obvious.)

Peter Godwin is a Zimbabwean author, and as is Tsitsi Dangarembga. Indeed, they were born two years apart in what was then Southern Rhodesia, but of course to very different families. Anyhow, it’s to her, and her powerful novel This mournable body (my review) that I’m linking for my last book.

So, a bit of an unusual chain this month, because most of my links draw from the content of the stories, rather than from my usual variety of link options. But this is all I had time to do this month. Five of my six authors are women, which is not very diverse, but we did travel to Japan, Korea, and Zimbabwe, as well as Australia – never once setting foot in the usual places like England and the USA. I’m sort of proud of that!

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

A new year, and here we are again with our Six Degrees meme. Before I get stuck in, though, I would like to wish you all the best for the New Year, and hope that 2023 proves to be a healthy and peaceful one for us all. We could all do with it, particularly those in troubled and disaster-affected parts of the world. Meanwhile, on with this post’s business. If you don’t know how it works, please check meme host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In January it is another book I haven’t read, Emily Henry’s Beach read, but, what’s new! It sounds somewhat intriguing. According to GoodReads “A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.” It is of course a perfect title for a down under January book …

So, it would be easy to go with what my choice of a beach read, but that’s not where I’m going. Instead, I’m looking at author’s name. Emily Henry’s last name can also be a man’s first name. This is also the case with Mary Grant Bruce, so it is to her juvenilia, The early tales (my review), that I’m linking to first.

From linking on author’s name, I’m next going to title, and another Australian oldie, Price Warung’s Tales of the early days (my review). This title is so similar to that given to Bruce’s juvenilia, but the work is very different. Bruce’s juvenilia are family stories, though not without socio-historical interest, while Warung’s are about convict days and lives, and have clear political intent.

Next, we are going back to author’s name for the link. Price Warung is a pseudonym used by William Astley (1854-1911). Another Australian writer, pretty much a peer in fact, is Jessie Catherine Couvreur (1848-1897). She wrote under the name Tasma, so it is to her satirical Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill (my review) that I am linking to next.

And now, enough of names and titles! My next link will likely push your credulity a bit, but, you know, all’s fair in six degrees linking, so here goes. As I recorded above, Tasma died in 1897. That year Kate Chopin’s short story “A pair of silk stockings” (my review) was published. It’s a powerful short story, and I want to leave Australia, so that’s where we are going.

Now, since I’ve pushed things a bit, I’m going to push it again. If you’ve read any of Chopin’s stories, you won’t be surprised to hear that she was inspired by Guy de Maupassant. In my review of the story above, I shared some of Chopin’s thoughts about de Maupassant, which included that, in him she saw, “Here was life, not fiction”. Another writer who admired de Maupassant, albeit with some reservations about the man I understand, was Henry James. However, he did say that his story “Paste” (my review) was inspired by Maupassant’s famous short story, “The necklace”.

For my last link, I am taking the easy path, and linking to Henry James’ brother, the philosopher William James and his essay “On some mental effect of the earthquake” (my review).

So, a bit of an unusual chain this month. Despite the fact that several of my links are straightforwardly on authors and titles, all of the works I’ve linked to are nowhere near contemporary, and the last three are short works rather than books. Some of you, though, may have read Chopin’s or James’ stories, at least? I’ll be interested to hear. Meanwhile, it does seem that this month we’ve not roamed far … staying essentially with “New World” authors.

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