Six Degrees of Separation, from I Capture the Castle to The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly meme, now hosted by Kate @ books are my favorite and best.

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

This month we start from yet another book I haven't read:

0. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

A coming-of-age novel written from the POV of 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, who, through her journal, tells the adventures of her eccentric and penniless family, the Mortmains, struggling to live in genteel poverty in a ruined castle during the 1930s.

My first chain would be another coming-of-age poignant stories I have read this year, also set around the 1930s:

1. The Red Pony by John Steinbeck

It is a compilation of five coming-of-age novellas, telling about 10-year-old Jody Tiflin's journey to adolescence. Throughout the five novellas, he gets to now the pain and struggle of adolescent life, through loss and responsibility. [My review]

The next chain is still a coming-of-age story, with another Jody as the main character, who also lost an animal he loved:

2. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawling

Young Jody adopts an orphaned fawn he calls Flag and makes it a part of his family and his best friend. But life in the Florida backwoods is harsh, and so, as his family fights off wolves, bears, and even alligators, and faces failure in their tenuous subsistence farming, Jody must finally part with his dear animal friend.

Fawn is a baby deer, and in the book of my next chain, though no deer appears in the story, it appears in the title:

3. The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper

[My review] The Deerslayer is the second novel in Leatherstocking Tale series, being a sequel of The Last of the Mohicans. The Deerslayer refers to our protagonist Natty Bumppo, an American frontiersman in 19th century, who live in the wilderness side by side with several Indian tribes. It's a fast-paced suspenseful adventure with a lot of actions. While I loved the story, I was a bit disappointed by how Fenimore Cooper unjustly "treated" a strong-willed female protagonist. This treatment reminded me of the same view to women in this book:

4. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I need not to write anything about this book, you must have been familiar with Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity, during the 19th century Puritanism. [My posts on this book]

I will only pick the word Scarlet from the title this time, to link to the next book with same word in the title:

5. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This book is where Sherlock Holmes first met his would be longtime sidekick, Dr. Watson. Therefore, to close this chain, I'd pick another book where it's great detective also met his longtime sidekick for the first time:

6. The Mysterious Affair in Styles by Agatha Christie

This is where it all started; the first crime novel written in 1920 by Agatha Christie; with many more to come. It is also our first introduction to the Inimitable Hercule Poirot and his best friend Captain Arthur Hastings. [My review]

I seem to always include a Christie or two in my Six Degrees posts. I can't help it. The day will come when I might construct a chain containing of only Christie's novels. Who knows?


Have you read those books? If you do #sixdegree, how it worked out for you this time?