2 Sept 2023

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

The starting book this month is Wifedom by Anna Funder, a novel about George Orwell’s wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy.

My first link is an obvious one via Orwell:

to George Orwell’s novella Animal Farm an allegorical novella, of the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union. It tells the story of a farm where the animals rebel against the farmer, Mr Jones, and throw him off the land. They hope to create a society where they are all equal, free and happy.

My second link is via Farming to:

James Rebank’s non fiction book, English Pastoral, about farming. His family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. It is beautifully written. I enjoyed his account of his childhood and his nostalgia at looking back at how his grandfather farmed the land. And I was enlightened about current farming practices and the effects they have on the land, depleting the soil of nutrients.

My next link is via English to:

The English by Jeremy Paxman, more non fiction He writes about food, sport, football hooligans, language, individualism, education, religion, ‘John Bull’, cities and the countryside – the English idyllic village, class structure and social tone, attitudes to women, business and trade to name but a few topics. It’s well researched and very readable, with a bibliography listing all the books he mentions plus others that presumably he has used.

My next link is via Jeremy to

Another author called Jeremy, Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: the Left Bank World of Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer. A memoir of the author’s refuge at the Paris bookshop, Shakespeare & Co. on the banks of the River Seine opposite Notre Dame. Jeremy Mercer, a Canadian crime reporter, packed his bags and headed for Paris after receiving a death threat. He arrived during the last days of 1999 and shortly afterwards found his way to Shakespeare & Co, where he was amazed to find not only is it a bookshop but also a place providing beds for a number of writers. 

My fifth link is via Shakespeare to:

Shakespeare’s Restless World by Neil MacGregor, non fiction recreating Shakespeare’s world through examining twenty objects. It reveals so much about the people who lived then, who went to see Shakespeare’s plays in the 1590s and 1600s, and about their ideas and living conditions.

My final link is via a retelling of one of Shakespeare’s plays:

Macbeth by Jo Nesbo, a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It sticks well to Shakespeare’s version (which itself wasn’t original!) – it has the same themes and plot lines. Inspector Macbeth, an ex-drug addict is the head of the SWAT team. All the characters are here, including Duncan, the new police Chief Commissioner, Malcolm his deputy, Banquo, Macbeth’s friend and his son, Fleance, Inspector Duff (Shakespeare’s Macduff, Thane of Fife), head of the Narcotics Unit, Caithness, the three witches, Lennox and so on. 

My chain is mainly non fiction. I’ve read all six books.

Next month (October 7, 2023), we’ll start with a classic – I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.