Six Degrees of Separation - from Seascraper to The Horse and His Boy

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is Seascraper by Benjamin Wood, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize. It’s a historical novel set in Ireland about a young man trawling for shrimp who dreams of artistic fulfillment.

Six Degrees of Separation – from Ethan Frome to March

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place, add six books, and see where we end up. This month’s starting point is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (1911), which involves a love triangle and a fateful sledding accident.

First Degree

A sledding accident with a less tragic outcome begins Louisa May Alcott’s Jack and Jill (1880); you may recall I secured my own copy in June.

The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor #1956Club

The 1956 Club is a meme created by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings to showcase books published in a specific year.  

Title: The Last Hurrah
Author: Edwin O’Connor
Publication: Little, Brown, hardcover, 1956
Genre: Fiction

Description: The Last Hurrah depicts the final campaign of an old-time mayor, Frank Skeffington, an Irish politician who has managed big city politics with equal measures of charm and graft, annoying the Protestants who manage the banks and law firms so much they are supporting his opponent, any opponent.  Disappointed in his own son, Skeffington invites Adam, the nephew he barely knows, to join him on the campaign trail.  Adam, a cartoonist unfamiliar with politics, is wary of being drawn into Skeffington’s corrupt world but curious enough to follow the old charmer to wakes and rallies and sessions with hangers-on, and surprises himself by coming to admire and care for his uncle.

Common Ground (A Pictorial Review)

When David C. Scheper, former Harvard center turned attorney, was in Boston recently, he told me Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas, was one of his favorite books, and asked me to describe how the Boston neighborhoods depicted in that book geographically relate to the parts of Boston with which he is more familiar.  Common Ground, a Turbulent Decade in theLives of Three American Families, won the Pulitzer in 1986 for its memorable depiction of three Boston families from very different backgrounds experiencing Boston school desegregation in the 1960s and 1970s.   My father, having worked with legendary judge W. Arthur Garrity in the U.S. Attorney’s Office (who later issued the decision that mandated school busing), was one of the first people Tony Lukas interviewed for the book, and I am very familiar with it.