The Terror of Knowing

So, I’ve just discovered another meme to add to my repertoire. It’s based on the game ‘Six Degrees of Separation’, the idea that everything, or everyone, can be connected in six steps or fewer.

It has been made even more popular by the game popular with the Internet – the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where you can Google any actor’s ‘Bacon Number’ to learn how many steps connect that person to Kevin Bacon. (It’s an intensely frustrating game and I apologise if I made you aware of it only now and now you are stuck in the spiral of trying to ‘win’ the game. It’s near impossible, don’t try.)

However, the book community has seemingly made this game less annoying by repackaging it as the ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ book meme. The idea is that every month a book is chosen and people then respond with their six degrees list, seeing how far away they can get from the starting point.

This month’s chain begins with a book I haven’t read: Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-seller, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Somebody who has read it though is Max from welldonebooks, whose other favourite book is…

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafón, a book which I loved but, most importantly, is a book about books, just like…

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Cath, one of the characters in the story writes fanfiction for a series called Simon Snow, something which bears a remarkable resemblance to…

The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling, a downright children’s classic of our time. I am sure that in years to come it will be considered a classic of children’s literature, as will…

Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman, an author who is mostly known for His Dark Materials’ trilogy but he also wrote…

The Ruby in the Smoke, a series about a young lady named Sally Lockhart who becomes embroiled in many an intrigue in Victorian London. She was played in the TV adaptation (a wonderful one, at that!) by Billie Piper, who has previously been in a book-to-screen adaptation, playing Fanny Price from…

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, a book I’ve tried on two occasions to get through but never can, thanks to not even being able to make it through a single adaptation of it. Some day though, some day! 

That was my ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ – it’s a fun meme to add to my regular posts and I hope you enjoyed seeing the connections you can make between seemingly disparate books. I highly encourage you to try it out for yourself and share in the comments below!

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