I was totally confused on how to go about this post. My husband and I pondered ways to write it over dinner at Jin 28 last night. “Mmmm, maybe I can tie in how I read Madeline L’Engle’s book A Wrinkle in Time when I was in sixth grade, and became so enamored with her writing that I began collecting everything she ever wrote, and then was privileged enough to meet her at Wheaton College in the late 1980’s…Let me just email Andi to see if I’m going in the right direction.”
Andi promptly talked me off the ledge, and said, “It’s basically a string of books. One reminds you of another book and so on. It can be thematic similarities, plot, imagery, setting or whatever strikes ya!” Then she credited Katie from Words for Worms with the idea. So…
if I start with Lost for Words because it’s a hilarious parody on winning a literature prize in England, I’m immediately reminded of The Parrots which is another witty parody on winning a literature prize in Italy.
Reading about a setting in Italy reminds me of Ten which is a collection of stories which occurs in Naples. Ten reminds me of the fabulous reading I did for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize last winter, of which The Mussel Feast was one of my favorites of the bunch.
Thinking of The Mussel Feast, and the meal that was fraught with anxiety, reminds me of The Dinner where parents meet to discuss something dreadful their sons have done, and thinking of horribly behaving offspring reminds me of There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In.
So, there’s a stream of consciousness resulting in 6 Degrees of Separation. It was so much fun to connect books that I’ve enjoyed this year, I think I just may do this again sometime. What a fun week this has been to post about favorite books!
Find more degrees of separation posts here.
