Hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, this meme asks us to start with one title and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. This month, to commemorate Beverly Cleary's death in March, we're starting with Beezus and Ramona, the first in the Ramona books. I actually [...]
Hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, this meme asks us to start with one title and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. This month we're starting with Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and I'm ending at Room by Emma Donoghue. I haven't read Shuggie Bain but when I read the description, I immediately thought of Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. I considered going down the path of memoirs featuring difficult childhoods but I didn't want to start with fiction and go down a nonfiction chain. So instead I formed a chain of emotionally-difficult fiction titles featuring children as narrators. According to the synopsis, Shuggie is a child who has to care for his beautiful, alcoholic mother. That made me think of... Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman. Ceecee's mom is an aging beauty queen who seems to have a mental illness. Ceecee does her best to take care of her. This book is definitely more lighthearted than the others I've chosen but this unstable mother came to mind as I read about Shuggie's mom. That's the initial connection I formed but there's more of a theme than a chain connecting the rest of these titles. This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash--Twelve-year-old Easter Quillby is one of several narrators in the book but she's another girl who has to care for her addicted mom and her younger sister. Things only get more complicated when their deadbeat dad shows up. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee--Scout is a well-loved little girl but she shares the story of a Black man's unfair trial in Alabama. She can see the truth of the matter and doesn't understand why adults are muddying the waters with their prejudices. The Dry…
Hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, this meme asks us to start with one title and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. This month, we're going from Redhead by the Side of the Road to A Game of Thrones. Redhead by the Side of the Road is Anne Tyler's newest release. I haven't read it but it was impossible for me to see that title and not think of... Anne of Green Gables, exactly as she's pictured on the book cover above. She's waiting on Matthew Cuthbert and the new life that awaits her. (Author: L. M. Montgomery) And that became my simple theme this week: redheads among my read books, in no particular order. Pippi Longstocking is another ginger whose adventures I enjoyed reading as a child. (Astrid Lindgren) And who can forget everyone's favorite red-headed family, the Weasleys from the Harry Potter series? Who's your favorite? At this point in my life, mine might be Molly. (J. K. Rowling) Alanna from the Song of the Lioness series is another perennial favorite. (Tamora Pierce) Then there's Scarlet, filling the role of a science fiction Red Riding Hood no less, from the Lunar Chronicles. (Marissa Meyer) And wrapping it all up we have A Game of Thrones and the rest of A Song of Ice and Fire, with Sansa and Catelyn Stark, Melisandre, Ygritte, and probably more gingers whom I've forgotten. So that's my chain from Redhead by the Side of the Road to A Game of Thrones! Where do your connections take you? Link up at Books Are My Favourite and Best! I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if…
Hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, the 6 Degrees of Separation meme asks us to start with one title and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. This month I went from Hamnet to Toil & Trouble. I haven't read Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell but the synopsis indicates that it's about a mother, Agnes, mourning the death of her beloved child, named Hamnet. Four years later, Agnes learns that her husband wrote a play called Hamlet. The author apparently never writes Shakespeare's name in the book; nevertheless, Shakespeare is the easiest way for me to create a bookish connection so he's my theme. Hamnet is historical fiction (sort of) about Shakespeare, as is... Ill Met by Moonlight by Sarah A. Hoyt. I was hoping to continue the trend of Shakespeare as a character but then I realized the book's title is taken from a line from A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act II, Scene i, "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.") The remaining books in my chain also have Shakespearean titles and they're ones I've personally read. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Timon of Athens, Act III, Scene v, "Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood?") Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (The Tempest, Act IV, Scene i, "Our revels now are ended. / These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and / Are melted into air, into thin air.") Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde (Hamlet Act I, Scene iv, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.") The Dark Tower by Stephen King. (Stephen King based his epic series on a poem by Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." But Browning based his poem on King Lear Act III, Scene iv,…
Hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, the 6 Degrees of Separation meme asks us to start with one title and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. This month, we're starting with the young adult classic, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. I've been a reader my entire life, so it might surprise you to learn that I've never read this book. And that leads us to my theme today--young adult/children's classics that I've never read. I started with Time Magazine's list of The 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time and chose books that had been published by the time I was a young adult, lo these many years ago, in the early '90s. I've tried to link them in some way that makes sense based on their synopses. (If you're curious, I also haven't watched any movies that have been based on these books.) The synopsis of Are You There God? It's Me Margaret mentions that Margaret's friends are shocked when they find out that she doesn't have an affiliation with a particular religious group. Kit has trouble with her religious community when she befriends the local woman known as The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Elizabeth George Speare). Matilda (Roald Dahl) is another independently-minded girl who is surrounded by an awful principal and troublesome parents. Brian, the main character in Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, is having trouble with his parents as well. Brian is trying to survive in the wilderness, which has to feel like a personal dystopia. Jonas from The Giver by Lois Lowry, slowly learns that he's living in a real dystopia. Taran may live in a fantasy world but it's one that also sounds dystopian since it's under…
Hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, the 6 Degrees of Separation meme asks us to start with one title and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. This month, we're starting with our last link from a previous chain. I chose Dissolution, from my September entry, as my first book and ended at One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Dissolution by C. J. Sansom is a historical mystery series centered around Matthew Shardlake, a disillusioned "hunchbacked" lawyer working in Tudor England. His appearance singles him out for abuse, both physical and emotional, at the hands of a prejudiced public. Someone else who draws undue attention because of her appearance is... Mercy Lavinia "Vinnie" Bump, a real person and the titular character in the historical novel, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin. Reaching a height of only 32 inches (81 cm), she could have been just as negatively impacted by public opinion as Shardlake was. But "Mrs. Tom Thumb" is made of sterner stuff and leverages her size into an advantage. She enters into a contract with P. T. Barnum himself and ends up touring the world and regularly dining with royalty and other elites. Another character who doesn't stay down for long and hobnobs with the rich and powerful is... Jacky Faber, the main character in the Bloody Jack series by L. A. Meyer. Jacky is a sailor at heart so she has seen a lot of the world in her short life. I believe she's circled the globe at least once, maybe more, by book nine, which is where I am in the series. Speaking of characters who cover a lot of ground... Allan Karlsson, The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared…
Hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, this meme asks us to start with one title and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. I purposefully kept my connections to spooky/horror reads for the Halloween season. My chain goes from The Turn of the Screw to Bird Box by Josh Malerman. (Isn't that vintage cover for The Turn of the Screw a hoot?) I haven't read The Turn of the Screw and honestly don't recall reading any of Henry James's work. But the book synopsis on GoodReads ends with this line: "For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them." That almost led me down the zombie road but I wanted this first connection to be from one classic to another. I decided to focus on a character who, wittingly or not, wants the evil that's about to befall him or her. And that led me to... Lucy Westenra and Mina Harker from Dracula. Their need for Dracula stems more from the supernatural power he gains over them than from any active desire on their own parts, but it's still there. As most of us know, there's a famous monster hunter who is introduced in Dracula: Abraham van Helsing. Another monster hunter I've read about is... Dr. Pellinore Warthrop from The Monstrumologist. This book, while aimed at a young adult audience, scared me to death. I'm normally a pretty calm person in real life but I jumped out of my skin at every little unexpected thing while I was reading this novel! A short story that also scared me to death is... "The Road Virus Heads North" by Stephen King, which I read in his collection, Everything's Eventual. King's short stories have always frightened me more than his…
Hosted by Books Are My Favorite and Best on the first Saturday of every month, this meme asks us to start with one title (Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld this month) and create a chain of bookish connections to see where it takes us. I've seen this around for a bit now and thought it looked like fun so I'm finally joining in! My chain goes from Rodham to Dissolution by C. J. Sansom. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld: I haven't read this, but it's impossible to think of Hillary Rodham Clinton without thinking of some of her political rivals and allies. That led me to Barack Obama who wrote... The Audacity of Hope. I personally admire Obama and love to hear him speak. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is another Black author who I think is a brilliant, fascinating speaker. He wrote... The Sky is Not the Limit about his personal journey to become an astrophysicist. Astrophysics is also addressed in Bill Bryson's book... A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson covers a lot of scientific ground in this book, so he also touches on chemistry, which is the subject of Sam Keane's book... The Disappearing Spoon. Keane's book is all about the periodic table of the elements. Robert Boyle was a scientist who defined the concept of an element pretty well. He was also a character in the historical novel... An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Ian Pears. This book takes place just after Oliver Cromwell's republic collapsed. Speaking of political Cromwells... Dissolution by C. J. Sansom features Thomas Cromwell as a bit of a behind-the-scenes puppet master. And that's my chain of logic! Where do your connections take you? Link up at Books Are My Favorite and Best! I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn…