Six Degrees of Separation – from Orbital to Ender's Game

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 the 2024 Booker winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which follows six fictional astronauts over 24 hours on an orbiting space station.

Love in a Mist by Susan Scarlett #DeanStreetDecember

This is one of 12 light-hearted novels that Noel Streatfeild wrote for adults under a pseudonym, and the only one I’ve read that wasn’t a romance. Instead, this is more of a Tring family story, a grocery business in its fourth generation as backdrop, and the gentle dictatorship of Dad-Tring and Mum-Tring over their adult sons, especially the two who work for their father. George, the eldest, is a solicitor, married to Anna, who believes she married beneath her and feels she is not sufficiently valued in the community. Andrew, the youngest, is married to Doris, who attended the London School of Economics and could have had a promising career.

Favorite Reads of 2024

Wishing you a Happy New Year and many good books in 2025! I read nearly 200 books in 2024 and quite a few were so compelling I kept recommending them to others or thinking about them myself. These are my top ten: