Collage of book covers: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney; The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker; Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg; The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig; Summer of '49 by David Halberstam; The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon; Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

6 Degrees of Word-Association Separation

It’s time for another adventure in Kate’s 6 Degrees of Separation Meme from her blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best. We are given a book to start with, and from there we free associate six books.

The starting point for this month’s 6 Degrees of Separation challenge is Sally Rooney’s latest release, Intermezzo. I keep meaning to read Sally Rooney’s works, but, you know, “so many books, so little time.” So I’m going to begin this exercise with word association

Intermezzo immediately reminded me of the title The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. 

Someone once described The Mezzanine to me as a book about a man on an escalator as he’s returning to work after lunch. If you’re thinking about grabbing some lunch, let me recommend Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg.

A trip from Alabama to Montana brings us, by way of word association, to The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig.

Speaking of a season, on my TBR shelf I have Summer of ’49 by David Halberstam. This book carries a hefty yet informative subtitle: “the classic chronicle of baseball’s most magnificent season as seen through the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.”

I’m having so much fun with word association that I nearly knocked myself out scrambling from one TBR shelf to the next until I finally located The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.

The easy way to end this list through word association would be to cite a book by another author named Thomas. But that approach would be for wimps. Instead, I proudly offer a book with Thomas in the title: Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. It’s a heart-wrenching work of speculative fiction that I highly recommend.

© 2024 by Mary Daniels Brown

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