Six Degrees of Separation from A Gentleman in Moscow to The Second Cure…

/ Theresa Smith Writes

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means a new round of #6degrees and this month’s starting book is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.

You can find the details and rules of the #6degrees meme at bookaremyfavouriteandbest, but in a nutshell, everyone has the same starting book and from there, you connect to other books. Some of the connections made are so impressive, it’s a lot of fun to follow.

I bought A Gentleman in Moscow wholly with the intention of reading it for this month’s six degrees but true to form, it’s still on my #tbr. It’s at the top of the pile though, I promise! I thought I might have been able to squeeze it in this past week but that turned out to be overly ambitious. As an alternative, I used the page 69 test:

Marshall McLuhan, prophet of the modern media age, recommends that the reader turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book.

Well I’d already bought the book, but would reading page 69 give me something to work with in terms of steering me towards a link? Yes, it did. On page 69, there seems to be a discussion going on around the precision of words, which immediately brought to mind The Other Half of Augusta Hope by Joanna Glen. The character of Augusta loves learning and in her younger years, this manifested itself in an obsession with words and knowledge that she would bombard her family with. Running alongside Augusta’s story is that of Parfait, an African refugee who has lost most of his family to civil war. Next link! When Elephants Fight by Majok Tulba, set in South Sudan and following the life of Juba as he flees his village and treks across the desert to a refuge camp. I’m just going to jump right across to Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen now, the link being, of course, the word elephant in the title. Fun fact: Water for Elephants was the very first e-book I ever purchased, back in 2011 when I became the thrilled owner of an iRiver eReader. The last e-book I bought? Last week, and it was This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, after reading a glowing review on one of the many blogs I follow (sorry, genuinely can’t remember who raved about this novel, but if it was you, thank you!). I’m very partial to birds on book covers, being a bird lover. They always catch my eye enough to get me to at least read the blurb. The last book I read with a bird on the cover was The Breeding Season by Amanda Niehaus, just last week. It was a real blend of sex and science themes, but if we’re going to start talking about science, I’m always going to bring it back to The Second Cure by Margaret Morgan, which is my favourite science fiction novel ever.

Next month (October 5, 2019), we’ll begin with a book that Kate says everyone’s talking about – Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. I’ve never heard about it, but I have a month to find out. Watch me look it up on the Friday before! Until then…

20 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation from A Gentleman in Moscow to The Second Cure…”

    • I appreciated The Other Half of Augusta Hope but I’ll be honest, Augusta herself was rather tiresome – for me anyway. But I still found it to be a very good book.
      Your chain is very intriguing, where you wandered! I didn’t know The Ruin was going to be adapted. I better hurry up and read it!

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  8. Thanks for the p. 69 tip. I hadn’t heard it before and know I’ll be using it in the future, as I often have not read the opening book for these 6 Degrees exercises. Still, I love them, and I love reading everyone’s chains.

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  11. Ooooh, the page 69 test!! I’d never heard of that before, that’s gold!! I’ve not read A Gentlemen In Moscow either (are we the last readers not to have picked it up?), but someone whose recommendations I put much store in said that his earlier one, Rules of Civility, is better. That makes me think of Jazz Age, which is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. That makes me think of underappreciated women writers, which makes me think of Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm. That makes me think of the snarky letter Virginia Woolf wrote about Gibbons winning a prize, so Mrs Dalloway… is this how the game works?? 😅 It’s good fun!

    And btw, if it helps I read and reviewed Three Women a little while back for a different website (https://primer.com.au/three-women-reveal-their-sex-lives-book-review/) – I’m not sure the book would be quite your cup of tea, from what I know of your tastes, BUT it should definitely get the thought cogs spinning for this degrees of separation game!

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