This month’s exercise begins with The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, set in Alaska in 1920. Jack and Mabel, a childless couple homesteading in the lonely wilderness, build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child has come to life. She hunts and roams the forest, like a creature out of a […]
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This month we start with Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller. I thought I had seen the film adaptation of this book, but from the description I see that I have not. I saw something, probably on Netflix, similarly titled, but about a politician. first degree However, not having seen the film or read
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This month’s assignment is to start with the book that we ended with last month. That was The Pig Man by Paul Zindel, which I described as a “seminal work in the movement to portray teenagers and their lives realistically (well before the designation young adult literature came into use).” first degree Another author who
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This month we begin with The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize. Even before Kate last month announced it as this month’s starting point, I had it on my list of books I wanted to read. So I had good intentions of having finished it before starting
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This month’s starting point is Wintering by Katherine May: “ Wintering is a poignant and comforting meditation on the fallow periods of life, times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our
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This month starts with a book by an Australian author shortlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction – Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. I got a late start on reading Sorrow and Bliss and have not yet finished it, but so far I’m liking it. The novel deals with one of my particular
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This month’s starting point is Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang. This novel, which won the Booker Prize and several other awards in 2001, opens with this declaration: . . . my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will
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As this month’s starting point, Kate has chosen “a hot favourite to make the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.” As wonderful as this book sounds, it won’t be available in the U.S. until July 12, 2022. first degree Therefore, I’ve decided to start with a key
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This month’s starting point is The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. About 35 years ago I tried to read a couple of Greene’s novels, The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana. I didn’t get very far in either one. I kept waiting for something to happen. For this month’s 6 Degrees, I
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This month we start with a book that topped Best of 2021 lists, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. I had seen this title on a lot of those Best Books of 2021 lists, where it was often described as “inventive fiction.” I usually love books described as inventive, experimental, or genre-bending,
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