Six Degrees of Separation: From Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to The Optimist's Daughter

 

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I wasn't in any hurry to read this book, but when it came up as a starting book for Six Degrees, it motivated me to get a copy. I have been reading it (at a slow pace) for three days now and am only halfway in. It is about two young people who create video games, and so far it focuses on relationships and family. I like the way it is structured, and I am enjoying reading it, immensely. 

1st degree:

Staying with the theme of video gaming, my first link is to Didn't See That Coming by Jesse Q. Sutanto. This is a young adult novel; the main character is an avid video-gamer. When she plays online she uses a male name to avoid harassment. The storyline is similar to The Shop Around the Corner (or You've Got Mail).  

2nd degree:

I enjoyed reading another book by Jesse Q. Sutanto, Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. Vera Wong is sixty years old, widowed, and lives alone above her tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. One morning she finds the dead body of a man on the floor of her tea shop, a man she does not recognize. She reinvents herself as an amateur detective.

3rd degree:

Staying in Chinatown in San Francisco, my next book is City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley. Miranda Corbie is a 33-year-old private investigator who investigates the death of Eddie Takahashi, against the wishes of the Chamber of Commerce and the police. Kelli Stanley makes San Francisco of the 1940's come alive; she describes the tensions within Chinatown due to the war in Asia and Europe very well. I learned much about Chinatown and the US attitude toward the war at that time. My husband introduced me to this series and he has read all four books in the series.

4th degree:

China Trade is another book set in Chinatown, but this time in New York City's Chinatown, in the 1990's. It is the first book in S. J. Rozan's series about two private investigators who frequently work cases together. Bill Smith is a white private investigator in his forties who lives in Manhattan; Lydia Chin is an American-born Chinese private investigator in her late twenties who lives in New York’s Chinatown with her mother. I am linking to Constance's review at Staircase Wit, because I read this book before I was blogging.

5th degree:

My fifth book is another book by  S. J. Rozan, Paper Son. This is the 12th book in the Bill Smith and Lydia Chin series, published in 2019. In this book Lydia discovers that she has relatives in Mississippi. Lydia's mom, Chin Yong-Yun, requests that Lydia go help out a cousin in Mississippi who is in jail, and she insists that Bill Smith go along to help. This is one of the best books in the series, and I enjoyed it especially because of the setting. I grew up in Alabama and I had relatives in a small town in Mississippi. This is a pretty good look at the South, without being over the top, not that I have spent a lot of time there in the last few years.

6th degree:

Another novel set in Mississippi is The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. The book was published in 1972 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1973. Laurel McKelva Hand is a widow, living and working in Chicago. She goes to New Orleans with her father, Judge McKelva, and his second wife, Fay, to visit the Judge's eye doctor. The judge dies while in the hospital for eye surgery. Laurel returns to her hometown in Mississippi for the funeral. Many readers love this book, but I did  not. It was funny at times, sad at times, but I could not connect with the characters or feel any involvement in the story.

The links in my chain of books centered on Chinatowns in different cities in the US, contemporary and historical, and then hopped over to Mississippi. 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your links go?

The next Six Degrees will be on February 3, 2024, and the starting book will be the book you finished on this month (or the last book read).