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 Kate has said that in recognition of Novellas in November, we should start with a novella that’s on our reading list. I have chosen one that I’m planning to read this month: Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet. It will be perfect for Reading Scotland Month as well. Here’s what it’s about:

On 9 July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a labourer from Liniclate on the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother and aunt. At trial in Inverness he was found to be criminally insane and confined in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison.

Some years later, Angus’s older brother Malcolm recounts the events leading up to the murders while trying to keep a grip on his own sanity. Malcolm is living in isolation, ostracised by the community and haunted by this gruesome episode in his past.

From Graeme Macrae Burnet, the Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project, comes a beguiling psychological novel set on a remote Scottish island. Based on a true story and drawing on the documentary evidence of the time, Burnet constructs a gripping narrative about madness, murder and the uncertain nature of the self.

Benbecula is an island in the Outer Hebrides. My first link is to another book set (at least partly) on a Hebridean island: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller (1). A wounded man returns home to England from the Peninsular War in 1809 and, after regaining his strength, travels to Scotland to finish his recuperation – followed by a soldier who believes he is guilty of a war crime. I thought this was a beautifully written novel.

My next book is written by an author who shares a surname with Andrew Miller. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2) is a retelling of the Trojan War written from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ best friend and lover. When I read this in 2012 it was the first Greek mythology book I’d read for years, so was something different for me. I’ve read a lot more of them since then!

Next, a simple link to another novel with the word ‘song’ in the title. The Long Song by Andrea Levy (3) is set on a Jamaican sugar plantation and is narrated by July, a young girl who is born into slavery. July lives through the Christmas Rebellion of 1831, the abolition of slavery in Jamaica and the changes that come afterwards and we see all of this through her eyes. I enjoyed this one but preferred Levy’s Small Island.

July is a month and so is May – John May, one of the two octogenarian detectives who work for the Peculiar Crimes Unit in Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May series. White Corridor (4) was the last one I read and follows Arthur Bryant and John May as they try to solve a mystery while stranded in their car during a blizzard. I’m hoping to read the next book in the series soon.

From a book with white in the title to one with black. The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse (5), is a 1948 novella about the unnamed son of a Dutch plantation owner in West Java who forms a childhood friendship with the son of his father’s estate manager, an Indonesian boy called Oeroeg. I read it in an English translation by Ina Rilke. If you’re still deciding what to read for Novellas in November, you may want to consider this one.

In Ghostwritten by Isabel Wolff (6), a ghostwriter is helping to write the memoirs of an elderly Dutch woman who grew up on a rubber plantation in Java and was sent to a Japanese internment camp there during the war. This was a fascinating book, although obviously disturbing to read about the conditions in the camps.

And that’s my chain for November! My links include the Hebrides, the name Miller, the word ‘song’, months for names, black and white and Java. Is there a connection between my last book and my first? Well, they are both set on islands and both have a one-word title.

In December we’ll be starting with Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.

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 Life of M by Rachel Cusk. I haven’t read this book, but here’s what it’s about:

M is a film star, and one of the most recognisable faces of our time.

With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. For her, it seems, the rules of reality have melted away.

Now M has agreed to let a stranger write her biography. Their project will sprawl and expand: to the olive groves and holiday beaches where M spends her days; across hotel rooms, bourgeois facades, film sets; through endless modern cities. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths – about the very experience of living – might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture? And what in the end will M make of their work?

I struggled to find a clever first link to start this month’s chain, so I’ve gone with a very simple link to a book with a similar title: Yann Martel’s Booker Prize winner, Life of Pi (1), in which an Indian boy, Pi, finds himself stranded in a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan – and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker!

There’s also a tiger in Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch (2). Jaffy Brown comes face to face with it in the streets of London and the experience leads to him being offered a job with Mr Jamrach, a dealer in wild animals. For the next few years Jaffy works at Jamrach’s menagerie, helping to take care of the animals – until one day he gets the chance to go to sea in search of a ‘dragon’. I loved this entertaining historical adventure novel, my favourite of the three books I’ve read by Birch.

The Georgian Menagerie by Christopher Plumb (3) shares a word in the title and is an interesting non-fiction book about the history of exotic animals and birds in 18th century London. As you can imagine, it’s sad to read about the treatment some of these creatures received once they were removed from their natural habitats and exhibited to the public, but there are also lots of fascinating and amusing anecdotes.

There’s a sort of menagerie in Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (4), although it focuses on only one type of animal. This unusual novel follows the story of the Bigtree family who run an alligator-themed amusement park in the Everglades. I found this book a bit uneven, but loved the imaginative setting, complete with theme park attractions such as daily alligator wrestling shows, the Bigtree family museum and the Swamp Café!

I tried to think of an alligator link, but I could only come up with a crocodile one! Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (5) is the first in the Amelia Peabody mystery series, about a Victorian lady with a passion for archaeology. Like most of the books in the series, this one is set in Egypt. Unless I’ve forgotten, I don’t think there were any real crocodiles in the novel – the title comes from an ancient Egyptian poem.

There is an actual crocodile in one of the stories in the collection A Bad Business by Fyodor Dostoevsky (6). The story is appropriately titled The Crocodile and is about a Russian civil servant, Ivan Matveich, who is swallowed alive by a crocodile being exhibited in St Petersburg. It’s a fascinating and surprisingly funny story. There are five others included in the book, all in new translations by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater.

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And that’s my chain for October! The chain has an animal theme and the links have included: ‘Life of’ titles; tigers; the word Menagerie; animal parks; alligators and crocodiles.

In November, in recognition of Novellas in November, we’ll be starting with a novella that’s on our reading list.

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 Kate has said that we should start with either our book group’s current read or the book we’re currently reading. I’m not in a book group so it has to be the latter for me. I actually put this chain together in the last week of August (I like to prepare it in advance), so I used the book I was reading at that time, which was The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly.

The Matchbox Girl won this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It’s set in Nazi controlled Vienna and is narrated by Adelheid Brunner, a girl with autism who collects matchboxes.

I’m using collections as my first link. The Collector of Dying Breaths by MJ Rose (1) is set in the 16th century at the court of Catherine de’ Medici and follows a perfumer who believes he can capture a person’s dying breath in a bottle and use it to reanimate their soul. An interesting and unusual book, but it’s the sixth in a series and I think I really needed to have read the others first.

The author of my next book shares a name with the previous one: she’s Rose Tremain, whose novel Restoration (2) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989. It’s another historical novel, this time set at the court of Charles II, where physician Robert Merivel comes to the king’s attention after tending to his spaniels and later becomes embroiled in his love affairs. I enjoyed the book but preferred the sequel.

The winner of that same year’s Booker Prize was The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (3). I loved this book, which is narrated by an elderly butler, Stevens, reminiscing about his career in the service of Lord Darlington of Darlington Hall. Stevens is played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1993 adaptation.

One of Hopkins’ earliest roles was Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter. Katharine Hepburn won an Oscar for the same film for her portrayal of Richard’s mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor’s story has been told in many novels, including The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick (4), the first part of an excellent trilogy taking us through the whole of Eleanor’s life.

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay (5) shares a word in the title – but this time, it’s not about a real queen. The ‘Queen of Fives’ is a title given to Quinn Le Blanc, the leader of a London network of con artists. This was an entertaining read and I’ve actually just finished Alex Hay’s new one, The Midnight Guests, which was also fun.

My final link is to another book with playing cards on the cover. Ace, King, Knave by Maria McCann (6) is also a similar sort of novel, with two young women becoming embroiled in a world of thieves, pickpockets, gamblers and grave robbers. I really enjoyed this book but had forgotten all about it until putting this chain together!

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And that’s my chain for September! My links have included: collectors, the name Rose, the 1989 Booker Prize, Anthony Hopkins, the word Queen and playing cards.

In October we’ll be starting with Life of M by Rachel Cusk.