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Books Memes

The Snow Child & Six Unusual Retellings

Snow Child

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best. The book for December 2022 is The Snow Child by by Eowyn Ivey.

Snow Child is a retelling of an old (and rather sad) folktale about the little girl that a childless couple finds in the woods, but she is made of snow and ice and cannot stay on. It reminded me of a few unusual retellings of folk tales and how the fictional and the real converge in our worlds.

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Books Memes

Second Place & Six Family Sagas

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best. The book for September 2021 is Second Place by Rachel Cusk.

Book Blurb: A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in the remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the center of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma―and disrupts the calm of her secluded household.

I haven’t read Second Place, but the blurb reminded me heavily of family sagas triggered off by critical events in the life of an ancestor. So, here are 6 books all tied-up in family legacy.

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Books Memes To Be Read Books

Red Letter Days: Six Epistolary Books

Letters Postcards

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher is the book for August 2021. Which makes me take on the very obvious route of epistolary books. Not my favorite format, but here’s the list for six books on red letter days.

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Books Memes

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Er, Pardon My French!

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss is the book for July 2021. This nonfiction modern classic “combines boisterous history with grammar how-to’s to show how important punctuation is in our world—period”. Let’s take a look at all the books on mannerisms that Eats, Shoots & Leaves reminded me of.

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Books Memes

Six Degrees of Sibling-Hood

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. The 6 Degrees of Separation Meme is hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary is the book for May 2021. As the blurb says, “Newbery Award winner Beverly Cleary delivers a humorous portrayal of the ups and downs of sisterhood. Both the younger and older siblings of the family will enjoy this book.

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Books Memes Music & Poetry

Shuggie Bain & Six Degrees of Slavish Fixation

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the 6 Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart is the book for April 2021. Shuggie Bain won the Booker Prize for its portrayal of alcoholism and addiction, and its impact on working-class families in 1980s United Kingdom.

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Books Memes Recommendations

Six Degrees: Not your Usual Guest Experiences

Redhead Tyler Guests

It’s time for #6degrees. Start with the monthly read, add six books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the 6 Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

February 2021’s book is Redhead By the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler. Redhead is about a “Tech Hermit”, Micah Mortimer, whose neat, routined life goes topsy-turvy when guests appear uninvited at his door. This made me think of various house guest experiences, especially for some of the more reclusive literary characters.

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Memes Recommendations

Hamnet & Six Degrees of Shakespeare

Six Degrees Hamnet

It’s time for #6degrees. Start off from the same place as other wonderful readers, add six connected books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the Six Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

January 2021’s book is Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Hamnet is a fictional account of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died at the age 11 in 1596, and his wife Agnes, about whom we have heard so little.

Hamnet reminded me of all things Shakespeare; so for today’s Six Degrees, let’s travel today across works inspired by the Bard.

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Books Memes

Six Degrees: Judy Blume’s Margaret & Six Little Women

Six Degrees Judy Blume

It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the Six Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

December 2020’s book is Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume, a book that’s been around for 50 years.

Margaret Simon, almost twelve, likes long hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain, and things that are pink. She’s just moved from New York City to Farbook, New Jersey, and is anxious to fit in with her new friends—Nancy, Gretchen, and Janie. When they form a secret club to talk about private subjects like boys, bras, and getting their first periods, Margaret is happy to belong.
But none of them can believe Margaret doesn’t have religion, and that she isn’t going to the Y or the Jewish Community Center. What they don’t know is Margaret has her own very special relationship with God. She can talk to God about everything—family, friends, even Moose Freed, her secret crush.

Are you There God made me nostalgic for all those vintage childhood reads about important turning points in the lives of the protagonists — and of the readers. These cherished books were published long back but ring true for every age.

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Books Memes

Six Degrees: Sleepy Hollow & Other Deadly Secrets

It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up. Inspired by the Six Degrees of Separation Meme hosted every month at Books are my Favorite and Best.

Last month, I chose Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) as the last book in my #SixDegrees chain.

Sleepy Hollow

Ichabod Crane, a schoolteacher, came to Tarry Town in the glen of Sleepy Hollow to ply his trade in educating young minds. He was a gullible and excitable fellow, often so terrified by locals’ stories of ghosts that he would hurry through the woods on his way home, singing to keep from hysterics. Until late one night, he finds that maybe they’re not just stories. What is that dark, menacing figure riding behind him on a horse? And what does it have in its hands? And why wasn’t schoolteacher Crane ever seen in Sleepy Hollow again?

Sleepy Hollow reminds me of all things slumberous, hidden, forgotten and deathly. Not surprising, since the Halloween Full Moon just turned the corner, eh?