Six Degrees of Separation – How to be both –> ??

I remember a few years ago, everyone was into the whole Six Degrees of Separation thing. It’s basically the idea that everyone is connected to any other person by six connections or fewer. I haven’t heard people talk about it in a while but I recently found the book version of it! Emma Chapman and Annabel Smith created #6DEGREES, where book bloggers share links between books in six moves. Here are the rules if you want to join in! Basically they choose a starting book and then you make your own chain however you want.

Today’s starting point is……How to be both by Ali Smith! (You’ll have to read all the way to the end to see where I end up 😉)

I admit, I don’t actually know much about this book (as in, I hadn’t heard of it before now oops!). But the synopsis sounds pretty amazing: “How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.”

This novel was one of the finalists for the Man Booker Prize in 2014. Wanna know what book was also a Man Booker Prize finalist (though ten years earlier)? Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

Cloud Atlas is a mind-bending story of many different people across time and space, who are all connected in some way. Another book that comes to mind for me when I think about connected stories across time is Furyborn by Claire Legrand.

The tagline for this book is “The stunningly original, must-read fantasy of 2018 follows two fiercely independent young women, centuries apart, who hold the power to save their world…or doom it.”

I think everyone knows I love a good book with independent female characters, and thankfully nowadays there are so many books centering female characters! In Furyborn, one of the women, Rielle, has elemental magic in 7 different areas.

One of my other favorite novels featuring strong women and elemental magic is the Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce. HA you thought there was no way I could get to Tamora Pierce right?? Think again.

This series follows four young kids who discover they have magic, and their subsequent journey to learn how to use their powers. Sandry has thread magic, Tris has weather magic, Daja has metal magic, and Briar has plant magic. Since I suppose technically I’m supposed to choose one book not a series, I’ll go with Tris and Tris’s Book! I love weather magic and Tris is badass.

When I picture Tris, I picture a small girl with WILD curly red hair (since…well, she’s described like that LOL). Anyway, another one of my favorite literary redheads is Fire, the main character of the book uhhhh Fire hahahaha by Kristin Cashore.

Fire is a “monster”, meaning she is inhumanely beautiful, but she also has powers to control the minds of others. This power is passed from the parents, so Fire’s father is also a monster. He is actually pretty evil, but views himself using his powers as for the good of himself and others.

Another one of my FAVORITE books that happens to feature twisted character viewpoints and people doing things “for the greater good” is Vicious by V.E. Schwab.

In this book, Victor and Eli are two men who started out as college roommates, gained ExtraOrdinary powers, and then some Shit. Went Down. Fast forward ten years, and Victor is breaking out of prison, while Eli is on the hunt to eradicate everyone else with these powers. Victor is generally seen as the villain by the populace, and Eli believes his journey is righteous and good. But if he’s killing innocents, isn’t he the villain??

And that’s six books! We’ve come to the end of the chain, and I’ve managed to go from How to be both, a contemporary/historical fiction novel, to Vicious, a wonderfully dark science fiction. I’m sure it doesn’t surprise anyone that I managed to make it to fantasy/science fiction book, since that’s what I primarily read.

This was so fun! I really like seeing what connections you can find between books, even if they aren’t obvious at first. I look forward to doing more of these!!

Can you think of any two books that you may not think were related at first, but actually have a common thread/idea/etc?