It’s the first Saturday of the month, which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. This is not a book I’ve read, but here’s what it’s about:

With a series of heartbreaks under her belt, Sally Milz – successful script writer for a legendary late-night TV comedy show – has long abandoned the search for love.

But when her friend and fellow writer begins to date a glamorous actress, he joins the growing club of interesting but average-looking men who get romantically involved with accomplished, beautiful women.

Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch, poking fun at this ‘social rule’. The reverse never happens for a woman.

Then Sally meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. But this isn’t a romantic comedy – it’s real life.

Would someone like him ever date someone like her?

Skewering all our certainties about why we fall in love, ROMANTIC COMEDY is a witty and probing tale of how the heart will follow itself, no matter what anyone says. It is Curtis Sittenfeld at her most sharp, daring and compassionate best.

Romantic Comedy doesn’t sound like my sort of book, although I did enjoy one of Curtis Sittenfeld’s earlier novels, Prep. I nearly used that for my first link but remembered that I’d already used Prep in a previous Six Degrees post, so instead I’ve gone with another book with Romantic in the title: The Romantic by William Boyd (1). This is the first – and still the only – book I’ve read by William Boyd, although I’m definitely planning to read more. It tells the story of Cashel Greville Ross, following him through his life from birth to death as he befriends the Romantic Poets in Italy, searches for the source of the Nile, joins the army in Sri Lanka and uncovers family secrets in Ireland.

The Romantic was longlisted for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction but didn’t make the shortlist – a big mistake, in my opinion! Another book I had read from the longlist that didn’t get shortlisted was The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk (2). The novel follows Zachary Cloudesley, son of an 18th century clockmaker and inventor of automata, as he travels to Constantinople in search of his missing father.

Automata is the link to my next book, The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola (3). Inspired by the real life scandal of ‘The Vanishing Children of Paris’ in 1750 and the technological advances in the creation of clockwork dolls and automata at that time, this is a fascinating novel set in Paris just a few decades before the French Revolution. It has a wonderful atmosphere, a beautiful cover and was one of my favourite books that I read last year.

Another book set in Paris is It Walks by Night by John Dickson Carr (4), part of the British Library Crime Classics series. This is one of five novels Carr wrote featuring the French detective and juge d’instruction (examining magistrate), Henri Bencolin. It’s a clever locked room mystery which I did find interesting – and couldn’t solve! – but I didn’t much like Bencolin as a character. I preferred The Black Spectacles, one of his Gideon Fell mysteries which I read earlier this year.

It Walks by Night was published in 1930 and so was The Mysterious Mr Quin by Agatha Christie (5). I really enjoyed this collection of short stories featuring Mr Satterthwaite, an elderly English gentleman, and his mysterious friend, Harley Quin, who comes and goes without warning and stays just long enough to help Satterthwaite solve the mystery. Much as I love Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple novels, it’s always interesting to venture beyond those books and see what else she wrote.

The author of the final book in my chain shares a name with Harley Quin (although he spells it with two ‘n’s). The book is The Streets by Anthony Quinn (6), in which a young newspaper reporter in 1882 visits some of London’s poorest slums to report on the living conditions. The book is fictional but based on real nineteenth century sources. I found it fascinating from a social history perspective, but the plot and characters didn’t interest me much and I struggled to finish it.

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And that’s my chain for this month! My links have included the word ‘Romantic’, books longlisted but not shortlisted, automata, Paris, books published in 1930 and the name Quin or Quinn.

In September we’ll be starting with Wifedom by Anna Funder.