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 a book I haven't read:
0. Passages by Gail Sheehy
Subtitle: Predictable Crises of Adult Life
A non fiction self-help book about how one manage each life crisis occurred during one's lifetime. Either we are entering our 20s, 30s, or even 70s or 80s, there would be changes in every phase, which might turn into crises. Quoting from Goodreads synopsis: "You'll see how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative change." Creative change (during a life crisis) is the key to my first chain, that leads to a book I've read two years ago:
This is a perfect Christmas book - equal to A Christmas Carol - which speak about love, family, and forgiveness. A wealthy but cantankerous and bitter widower hired poor children to enliven his mansion on Christmas. That he was alone, is entirely his own fault. He banished her daughter after her elopement, and hence the separation between father and daughter. Although of different circumstances, these father and daughter in my fourth chain are also separated, which caused their unhappiness:
"All down the stone steps on
either side were periwinkle in full flower, and [Mrs Arbuthnot] could now see
what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented,
across her face. It was wisteria."
I felt that the wisterias isn't
just flowers here, it's almost like a character of its own, symbolizes warmth
and love from mother nature. And that reminds me of another book, in which
flowers also becomes character to the story. And this will become my last chain:
Like the two women in The
Enchanted April, on her first arrival at her new home, Manderley, Mrs. de
Winter was also "welcomed" by the profusion of rhododendrons.
The rhododendrons represent the enigmatic Rebecca with her strong destructive passionate personality. How much different it is with the tenderness of the wisterias in The Enchanted April, with its capability of rehabilitation; but nonetheless, each flower has its own power on our protagonists.
I was so satisfied by how these chain turn out beautifully. I've thought this one will be slightly difficult because we have a non fiction for the starter, but it turned out to be the easiest and best one I've worked out so far!
"...on either side of us was
a wall of colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads. We were amongst the
rhododendrons. [...] They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon
the other in incredible profusion..."
The rhododendrons represent the enigmatic Rebecca with her strong destructive passionate personality. How much different it is with the tenderness of the wisterias in The Enchanted April, with its capability of rehabilitation; but nonetheless, each flower has its own power on our protagonists.
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I was so satisfied by how these chain turn out beautifully. I've thought this one will be slightly difficult because we have a non fiction for the starter, but it turned out to be the easiest and best one I've worked out so far!
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