Six Degrees of Separation, Bookish Edition!
As you may have noticed, my lovely co-blogger Ri has made her triumphant return to book blogging! The two of us thought we’d do a collaborative post to celebrate both being actively blogging again. We were playing around with ideas and I remembered that a looooong time ago, I did a bookish blog tag called “Six Degrees of Separation.” This involves starting with a given book, and then jumping from book to book making connections between them. You can see the previous posts I did here and here. You may have heard of the term in the context of how you are related to famous people, but this is the bookish edition.
We thought it would be fun to do this but trade back and forth in making connections to different books! We asked for suggestions for a starting book from our friends. And our friend Steph suggested that we start with Pachinko. But where do we go from there….?
Ri:
Thanks, Mackenzie! I haven’t read Pachinko but based on the synopsis, it makes me think of family sagas which make me think of Little Fires Everywhere.
I loved this book! It explores and questions issues involved with motherhood, found families, adoption, identity, and ways of living. It’s a complex and multifaceted story with characters you’re bound to be invested in.
Mackenzie:
I’m parroting Ri a bit here, but I haven’t read Little Fires Everywhere. However!! From the synopsis I see that it takes place in Shaker Heights, Ohio. This made me think of small town Ohio things, and that made me think about The Warrior Heir. This is a young adult fantasy novel that takes place in a small (fictional) town in Ohio! It’s a super underrated series, and I wish more people would read it.
Ri:
Hmm, alright that synopsis makes me think of competing houses, which lead me to Red Rising! It’s been years since I read this book, but I remember it being action-packed.
Mackenzie:
So we all know that Red Rising is one of my favorite series! It’s an epic space opera with lots of action. What’s another series like that? Well, The Salvagers of course! The first book is A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. Highly recommend this book for fans of queer found family, magic in space, and great adventures.
Ri:
A ship you say? I definitely have to go with The Liveship Traders trilogy for this one. It’s got sentient ships and well-written female leads, what more could you want? 😉
Mackenzie:
So magical sentient ships makes me think of magical sentient items in general. And my immediate thought for this is the sentient sword in Warbreaker! It’s called Nightblood, and it has a great personality haha.
Also as a side note, I actually though of a sentient sword from a podcast first. That one is called Beacon, and it’s from The Adventure Zone: Amnesty. Something about sentient swords is just the bomb.
So there we are! We went from Pachinko to Warbreaker – which are at first glance definitely not very similar haha. Do you think you would have made similar connections like the ones we did? If you were doing the same post, what would be your first connection after Pachinko?
PS: If you’ve missed Ri’s most recent posts, two of those are for a couple of my favorite books, Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth. Read her reviews of those here and here (respectively)!
Ooh, so this is what the book title request was for! I can join you two and say that I haven’t read Pachinko, haha. But one day… I think my sister enjoyed it, and I tend to like stuff she likes (sadly, the other way round is not true…)
Loved seeing your little conversation here and how you jumped from one book to the next! This was so fun to read <3
Hahaha yes! This was the request. OH really? I definitely thought you had read it for some reason! But hopefully one day. WHAT??? Does she at least like Hobb?? And I’m glad you enjoyed it Steph! It was really fun to do.