Six Degrees of Separation, from Orbital to This Side of Paradise

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. Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

I didn't read too many science fiction, but here's another space-themed novel I have enjoyed in the past:

1. Contact by Carl Sagan

This is one of the books which I have read after watching the movie adaptation. The movie was my first introduction to the inimitable Jodie Foster. Which reminded me of another book-made to-movie with Jodi Foster playing the main character:

2. Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon

I loved Jodie Foster as Anna Leonowens in this movie, an English teacher who arrived in Siam (now Thailand) to teach the King's children. She played alongside Chow Yun Fat, playing the Siamese King. Their chemistry was perfect, and I loved the Siamese culture background. The book was much more realistic than the movie, but that's understandable.

Another book I've read lately with rich Asian culture background is:

3. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan Philipp Sendker

The story is about a woman who's seeking her father who disappeared years ago. The father's story is a remarkable one. His childhood with blindness caused by cataract was moving as well as inspiring.

Coincidentally, my very next read after this one was another book with also a cataract-induced blindness in a boy. Quite a serendipity, eh? The book is:

4. Babbacombe by Susan Scarlett

The near-blind boy in question is the younger brother of the main character in this book, a young woman called Beth. She works as junior salesgirl at a department store, Babbacombe's. As I have mentioned in the review, there are aspects of this book which I found is similar with:

5. The Ladies Paradise by Émile Zola

The premise of this classic is very similar to Babbacombe's, a junior sales girl falls in love with the handsome owner (or son of the owner in Babbacombe's) of department store which she works for. Other than that, it's difficult to find similarity with other books - Zola's is quite inimitable. So, for my last chain I'll go with the word Paradise in the title:

6. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This one is about an altogether different kind of "paradise". It's a wonderful work of Fitzgerald; the epitome of Jazz Age era.


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