My Blogging Challenge with 6 Degrees of Separation

My first try at a blogging challenge that looks really good

From Land by Maggie O’Farrell

This is 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 rules are:

• Link the books together in any way you like.
• Provide a link in your post to the meme at Books are My Favourite and Best.
• Share these rules in your post.
• Paste the link to your post in the comments on Kate’s post and/or the Linky Tool on that post.
• Invite your blog readers to join in and paste their links in the comments and/or the Linky Tool.
• Share you post on Twitter using the #6Degrees hash tag.
• Be nice! Visit and comment on other posts and/or retweet other #6Degrees posts.

Degree 1 So, here goes. I’ve not read Land by Maggie O’ Farrell yet but I loved Hamnet so I probably will. Land is about a man who works for the Ordnance Survey in Ireland in 1865. My first link is a map

Degree 2 When I bought The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe at a little bookshop in Felsted, Essex at the age of seven, one of the first things that drew me in was the map inside the front cover. It introduced me to a new world and it captivated me as soon as I saw The Lamppost and The Witch’s Castle. Along with that book in my first visit to the bookshop I bought two other books that set me on the path to collecting another series.

Degree 3 The Target Doctor Who books were an obsession of mine for a number of years, but the first time I went to the Felsted bookshop, I bought two as my one pound was enough for three paperbacks in 1972! I bought was The Daleks, which was an obvious choice as they were the most famous monsters. The other book was less obvious. It was The Crusaders, one of the historical stories, but the cover looked so good I decided to get it.

Degree 4 Another cover that I judged a book by was The Hobbit in it’s original JRR Tolkein design. It’s one of the most arresting covers ever and perhaps unique in being designed by the writer themselves. At 11 it introduced me to a fantasy world I loved as I went on a journey with Bilbo. Sadly, the magic vanished when I tried to read Lord of the Rings a year later. I couldn’t get into the story and started it twice, never getting out of the Shire either time. Some books just don’t appeal for whatever reason. However, it set off a liking for fantasy that one author above all others satisfied.

Degree 5 Terry Pratchett was simply a genius. If his books weren’t set in Discworld and full of wizards, dwarves, trolls, orcs and vampires they would be acknowledged as the finest series of books written by any British author in the last 50 years. I have read most of the Discworld series of over 40 books and loved nearly all of them. The Hogfather was the first one I picked up in the compound library when I was working in Saudi Arabia because it was about Christmas (or perhaps a version of the Solstice) and within a few weeks I had read every single Terry Pratchett in there!

Degree 6 Any regular reader of my blog will know that one book stands above all others in my affection. It was the story that became central to my view of the world from very early on, A Christmas Carol LIke The Hogfather this is set at Christmas, but the Christmases it depicts vary according to time, character and money. It is a book that contains life in all its glory and captivates me anew every year.