Six Degrees of Separation: From The Post-Office Girl to Going Postal

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 The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zwieg. The book was published posthumously in 1982. Christine works in a post-office in Austria in 1926. Her mother is ill and they have little money. Christine has the opportunity to live with her aunt for a while and see how the rich live, then she has to return to the poverty of her previous life. I gathered all this from various reviews or summaries I read; I hope my description is reasonably accurate. 

1st degree:

My first link is to Rest in Pieces by Rita Mae Brown. The heroine of that book, Mary Minor Haristeen (nicknamed "Harry"), is the postmistress of the small town of Crozet, Virginia. She owns a farm, with horses, and has a grey tiger cat and a Welsh Corgi. Many of the residents of Crozet and the surrounding area are odd and quirky to say the least. In Crozet, everyone knows everyone and there is a lot of gossip.

The animals have a role in the story. They do not detect, but they do try to attract Harry's attention to clues, etc. They interact with other animals: Simon, the opossum; a barn owl; and Pewter, a neighbor's cat. The animals talk among themselves. At first I found that silly and distracting, but after a while, their conversations sounded much more intelligent that the humans.

2nd degree:

For my second link, I am sticking to the postal theme. My husband found this book for me: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. I found the best description of this book at Old Paper and Cats. S. Hargrave, who writes the posts on that blog, describes it as: "a trilogy of novels written by Flora Thompson about growing up in a remote English hamlet called Lark Rise and, later, her years working in a post office in the village of Candleford Green. These novels aren’t exactly ‘novels’ per se, in the sense that they are not traditionally structured narratives. Instead, they are more of a collection of stories about rural life in the later nineteenth century."

There are three short books in the series: Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943). Only the last book in the series covers the time that the main character was an assistant at the post office.

3rd degree:

I am staying with the mail theme, but moving on to those who deliver the mail. My next link is to Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant.  In Mailman, Grant has written a memoir about delivering mail in Appalachia, after losing his job for a consulting firm. He moved back to his hometown of Blackburg, VA and got a job as a rural mail carrier because he needed to have health care and support his family. This major change in his life took place in the first few months of Covid. My husband read this book and enjoyed it a lot; the writing was good and the author comes across as a mellow person. I want to read Mailman later this year.

4th degree:

Another book about a letter carrier is The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault, a Canadian author. The setting is Montreal.  

This description is in my Kindle edition:

Secretly steaming open envelopes and reading the letters inside, Bilodo has found an escape from his lonely and routine life as a postman. When one day he comes across a mysterious letter containing a single haiku, he finds himself avidly caught up in the relationship between a long-distance couple who write to each other using only beautiful poetry. He feasts on their words, vicariously living a life for which he longs. But it will only be a matter of time before his world comes crashing down around him.

This book sounds appealing and in the Kindle edition it is only 106 pages long.

5th degree:

My next link will be to another book with postman in the title: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. The book is a classic noir mystery and also very brief, only 120 pages long in this edition. James M. Cain is a well known author of noir fiction; this was his first novel. I did not really enjoy reading this book (too noir, too grim, too gritty), but it is very well written, with good pacing. The last 30 pages was the best part and pulled the book together without going for an unrealistic "happy" ending. But what does it have to do with the postal service? Nothing. The title is symbolic and there have been many conflicting explanations for why it was used.

6th degree:

My last link is very definitely about the postal system, but it is a postal system set in a fantasy world. Going Postal is the 33rd book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Most of the books in the series are humorous and satirical. The main character in this book is Moist von Lipwig, a swindler and a con man, who has been sentenced to hang for his offenses. But he has been given the alternative option to take over the ailing postal service of Ankh-Morpork, Discworld's city-state. Thus Moist von Lipwig accepts the position of Postmaster. He is also assigned a golem watchdog to keep him in line. It sounds like fun to me and I have a copy on my shelves.

My Six Degrees took me from the state of Virginia in the USA to the fictional fantasy world of the Discworld Series. Along the way I also stopped in Canada and the UK. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on July 4, 2026, and the starting book will be Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

Books Read in September and October 2025

 

I am so far behind on summarizing my monthly reading that I decided to combine my September and October books in one post. I read 5 books in September and 7 books in October and I enjoyed all of them.

Nonfiction

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (2017) by Margareta Magnusson

The subtitle of this book is: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. I read it about six years ago, and enjoyed it. On a second reading it did not inspire me so much, even though I have plenty of things to get rid of. This brief book (only about 100 pages) is full of humor and useful hints and reminders of how much you need to let go of as you get older, and written from the author's personal experience. 

Fiction

State of Wonder (2011) by Ann Patchett

This book is set mostly in Brazil. The story is about Dr. Annick Swenson, an older woman who has been researching a proposed fertility drug for a pharmaceutical firm based in Minnesota. She is living in the Amazon jungle working in a lab but she has not reported back on her progress for a long time. The other major character is Dr. Marina Singh, a pharmacologist working for the same firm; she is sent to Brazil by her employer, to find out the status of Dr. Swenson's research. There are many other characters, and they are all interesting. It is a very bizarre story, although it gets very much better at the halfway point. In the end, I liked the story very much. 

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf

Reading Mrs. Dalloway was a good experience for me. It was the first book I had read by Virginia Woolf, plus I had never read anything written in stream of consciousness style. It did take me a good while to adjust to that style of telling a story, and it got even more confusing when the story moves from Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to various other people's ruminations.

The story is basically a day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway, but as Clarissa Dalloway goes through her day she muses about her past and her future: her daughter; her daughter's friend, who she doesn't like; and her own relationships with men over the years. My review is here.

Get in Trouble (2015) by Kelly Link

This short story collection was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. There are nine short stories; there are some that are science fiction, some are fantasy, and even one story that is straight fiction. I liked the stories and plan to read more by this author. My review is here.

Oh William! (2021) by Elizabeth Strout

I have loved all of Strout's books that feature Lucy Barton. In My Name is Lucy Barton, Lucy tells of one event in her life while she is married to William, and I really disliked him in that story. In each succeeding novel about their relationship I grew to understand him and Lucy more. The books are all about relationships; in this book, William is married to his third wife and Lucy's second husband died recently. See my thoughts here.

Alternate History / Espionage / Fantasy

At the Table of Wolves (2017) by Kay Kenyon

This is a spy story set in an alternative version of the UK and Germany in the years leading up to World War II. In both countries, there are people with fantastical paranormal abilities; these powers started showing up after World War I. For the most part, the "superpowers" are not very obvious and people have to be trained to use them. See my review here.

Fantasy

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea (2022) by Rebecca Thorne

My son purchased this book at the book sale this year.  I was interested in checking out what a cozy fantasy was like so my son let me read it first. The story is about a lesbian couple who want to leave their current lives behind and open a bookstore in a remote location where no one can find them. The problem is that Reyna is a private guard to a powerful and cruel queen, and Kianthe is a powerful mage. Somehow they both manage to leave their responsibilities behind and move to a small town far from their previous lives to set up a book shop. My review is here.

Guards! Guards! (1989) by Terry Pratchett

This book is the 8th book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and the 1st book in the City Watch sub-series. The series stars Sam Vimes, but in this novel, the City Watch police force don't function very well in keeping the peace, because of the corruption at high levels in the city of Ankh-Morpork. This is only the third Discworld book I have read by Pratchett; I read Mort in 2016. So I had to get used to Pratchett's style of writing again. I enjoyed the book, even though it took me about half of the book to get into it and be able to keep track of the characters. The characters are all very strange and the book is satirical. I now have the next book in the City Watch series to read (Men at Arms).

Crime Fiction

The '44 Vintage (1978) by Anthony Price

This is the eighth book in Price's David Audley series of nineteen books, all published between 1970 and 1990. The series is in the spy fiction genre, and the stories are Cold War espionage. Except for this one, which takes place near the end of World War II, and is kind of an origin story for the two main characters in the series, historian and intelligence agent David Audley and Colonel Jack Butler.  I loved this book and all the other books I have read in the series; each book focuses on different historical event. The '44 Vintage would not be a good place to start the series, though.

The Satan Sampler (1979) by Victor Canning

This is the 6th book in a spy fiction series called the Birdcage books. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. I enjoyed this book, although it wasn't as good as earlier entries in this series. See my thoughts here.

The Dentist (2020) by Tim Sullivan

This is the first book in a series that features an autistic police detective. I was very pleased with the book. The plot was very good,  complicated but realistic. I liked the protagonist, Detective Sergeant George Cross, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. I liked everything about the book, including seeing what a person with Asperger's would encounter in a job, and how the person's coworkers may be affected. 

This series started in 2020 and there are already eight books in the series. I have already purchased the second and third books in the series and will be reading them in 2026.

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (2023) by Benjamin Stevenson

This is the 2nd book in the Ernest Cunningham series; I read the 1st book earlier this year. Both of the books are highly entertaining and humorous. Ernest, who narrates the story, makes a living writing about how to write mysteries. Prior to this book he has written a memoir about his experience with a serial killer. As the book begins, he is attending a writing conference set on a train.

More cat pictures...

London has now been with us five months. We are still adjusting to London and he to us. When we first got him he sat or slept on cat beds. Now he ignores them and uses the furniture (or sits on books). Click on the images for the best viewing quality. 

Spell the Month in Books — July 2025

Spell the Month in Books is a monthly meme hosted by Jana at Reviews from the Stacks. The link up post is posted on the first Saturday of each month. Each month one or two themes are suggested for the books that are chosen. The theme for July is “set in a fantasy world or fictional place!”

This is the first time I have done this meme, and I am very late. 

 

J is for Just One Damned Thing after Another by Jodi Taylor

This is the first book in a time-travel series. The main protagonists are historians from St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research. Each has a special area of expertise but the assignments may take them to any time in the past. The story carries you along pell mell through adventure after adventure, and the historians find out that there are lots of challenges ahead.  I think that there are now 14 books in the series, and I have read the first two books. 

U is for Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. 

Terry Pratchett is well-known for his fantasy books set in the Discworld Universe. I am no expert on the books in this series; I have only read two of them. But I did enjoy those. I read The Light Fantastic, the second book in the series. Later I read Mort, the first book in the Death Series. Unseen Academicals is set at a university where the wizards must win a game of football without using magic. It is a later book in the series, #37.

L is for The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. 

This is a space opera. To get away from an unhappy event in her past, Rosemary Harper joins the small crew of a ship that creates tunnels through space for faster travel. She is the clerk, taking care of ordering and forms and such. Some of the crew is human and others are various types of aliens.

I liked the various aliens and their different gifts, needs and culture. The author did a great job with differentiating between the characters. Many of the characters are quirky and everyone has to learn to accept the quirks on a long journey in a small ship.

Y is for The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon.

This novel crosses genres, being both an alternate history and a mystery, with elements of a conspiracy thriller. This book came to my attention via my husband, who read it first and recommended it to me. The setting is an alternate universe where Jewish refugees and their descendants have been allowed to in live the Federal District of Sitka, in Alaska. At the point the novel begins, the District is about to revert to Alaskan control.

Reading Summary, January 2019

Another lovely month of reading in January. I read ten books: one fantasy, eight mysteries, AND I finally finished Les Misérables. I was feeling pretty bad about taking 13 months to read that book, but when I realized I read 400 out of 1200 pages in December and January, I decided that wasn't so bad.

Of the eight crime fiction books, two were set in the UK (England and Scotland), one was set in France, one set in Canada, and the others were set in the US. So, a good bit of variety.

Classic Fiction in January

Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo

Very glad to have finished this book. It started out as part of a chapter a day challenge, but that did not work well for me and I was reading it in e-book format. About a third of the way through I switched to my hardback copy, but that still did not keep me from reading in fits and starts. January was more a month of reading comfort books for me so it wasn't until the end of the month that I got back to the book and finished the last 140 pages. A very emotional section of the book. I am glad I read the book.

Fantasy Fiction in January

Good Omens (1990) by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

This is a comic version of an Armageddon novel. It was written when both Gaiman and Pratchett were at the beginning of their careers. I enjoyed it very much, although I did have problems with an overload of humor. I prefer more subtle humor. The book is often compared to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and it does have the same style of writing and tone. A very entertaining  and fun book.

Crime Fiction in January

True Detective (1983) by Max Allan Collins

A historical mystery, with a private detective as the likable protagonist, not damaged, but not perfect either. And set in a very interesting time and place: Chicago during Prohibition, early 1930s. I loved the book and the character. My review is here.

Field of Blood (2005) by Denise Mina

I liked the first Denise Mina book I read (Garnethill), and this one was also very good. The subject matter was not my favorite; a young child has been killed. However the setting was great: Glasgow in the early 1980's. And the characters are well developed, interesting, not gorgeous with fantastic lives but real people with problems.

A Room Full of Bones (2011) by Elly Griffiths

The 4th book in a series of 11 books about Ruth Galloway, forensic anthropologist. She works with the police in her area whenever bones need to be examined. This series shines because the main characters are unique and the cast of recurring supporting characters get more and more interesting.

Murder with Pictures (1935) by George Harmon Coxe

My first vintage mystery fiction of the year. I was interested in this series, starring Kent Murdock, because he is a newspaper photographer, with a gift for sleuthing. I look forward to reading more by Coxe.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1950) by C.W. Grafton

C. W. Grafton was the father of Sue Grafton; he wrote four novels, and three of those were mysteries. This was his last novel, and I believe it is the best known.  This book was very different, it is an inverted mystery, and I enjoyed it very much. My review is here.

Die Trying (1998) by Lee Child

This is the 2nd Jack Reacher novel and there are now 23 books in the series. In the past year and a half I read two other Jack Reacher novels, the 9th (One Shot) and the 18th (Never Go Back). I am amazed at how much I enjoy these books. The writing is nothing special but the author draws me in and keeps me reading and I like the Jack Reacher character a lot.

A Rule Against Murder (2007) by Louise Penny

My first Canadian book of the year. Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are celebrating their 35th anniversary at the Manoir Bellechaise, a former hunting lodge turned luxury resort on the shore of Lac Massawippi in Quebec. For those who are not familiar with Louise Penny's series, Armand Gamache is the head of Homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, and the protagonist of the series. This is the fourth book in the series. It took me a while to warm up to the series, but this book was very, very good.

Summertime All the Cats Are Bored (2009) by Philippe Georget

Gilles Sebag is a police inspector in the  French seaside town of Perpignan. He has been passed over for promotion  throughout his career due to choosing to take a reduction of hours when his children were young. His children are now teenagers and he suspects that his lovely wife may be having an affair. Then a young woman goes missing and the case becomes high profile, demanding most of his time. This was not a perfect book but very interesting and one that provides a good picture of the south of France. 

Reading in November 2016

Another wonderful month of reading with a good bit of variety. Some relatively current crime fiction, a fantasy novel, a couple of mysteries set at Christmas, and some mysteries from earlier decades.

I started out the month with a book from the fantasy genre, one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. I read Mort, the first book in the Death series. I am glad that I have finally started reading Pratchett's books.

I also read a very short graphic novel, RED. This graphic novel by Warren Ellis was the basis for the movie of the same title, released in 2010, starring Bruce Willis, Mary Louise Parker, and a lot of other entertaining and talented actors. When I say it was short, it was only three issues when first published, for a total of 66 pages. The book also includes character design sketches and the script and layouts for issue 1. I found these very interesting since I don't know the processes for developing a comic.



These are the crime fiction books I read in November...

A Question of Proof by Nicholas Blake
(Originally published in 1935, this book is set in a boarding school. This was the first book in the Nigel Strangeways mysteries by Nicholas Blake. Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Cecil Day Lewis, a poet laureate in the UK in the late 1960's into the early 1970's.)

Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake
(This was the second book in the Nigel Strangeways mystery series. It is set at Christmas, and is a traditional English country house mystery.)

The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald (reviewed here)

Past Tense by Margot Kinberg (reviewed here)

Dupe by Liza Cody (reviewed here)

Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves
(This is the second book in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series, which is also now a TV series. A woman was put in prison ten years before for killing a teenage girl, the daughter of her ex-lover. Now it has been discovered that the woman was innocent, and Vera is looking into the original investigation.)

Murder Goes Mumming by Alisa Craig
(Another book set at Christmas. This one is a cozy, a humorous tale set in New Brunswick, Canada. Alisa Craig is the pseudonym of Charlotte MacLeod, used for two series set in Canada . Review coming soon.)

The Light Fantastic: Terry Pratchett

Most people, or at least most readers of book blogs, know about the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett. However, I did not know until three or four years ago what that world was like so I will share a short description with you. As described in this book, the Discworld is a flat disc-shaped world "carried through the starry infinity on the backs of four giant elephants, who were themselves perched on the shell of a giant turtle. His name – or Her name, according to another school of thought – was Great A'Tuin."

For the second time recently, I have read a fantasy novel where I was lost for the first few chapters. This time I have a bit of an excuse. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett is a sequel or continuation of The Colour of Magic, the first Discworld Book, which I have not read. Although Pratchett does bring the reader up to speed, I still found the set up, the style of writing, and the structure confusing.

The basic story is that a red star has appeared in the sky and is going to collide with the Discworld. There appears to be only one person who can save that world: Rincewind, the wizard. However, he is an incompetent wizard and he doesn't even know that imminent destruction is on its way. He is travelling with Twoflower the tourist and The Luggage. Later in the story they meet up with Cohen the Barbarian and Bethan, a young girl about to be sacrificed by the Druids.

This book was very clever and funny and entertaining, after I stopped being confused. I read it as an introduction to the Discworld books, and it filled that function well, although now I wish I had read The Colour of Magic first. Parts of this book reminded me of Douglas Adams' The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, except that this is fantasy, with wizards and really weird stuff like talking luggage and Cohen the Barbarian (a very old version of Conan).

There are numerous suggestions online for ways to approach the Discworld books. Since I am a novice in this area, I will just note that some people say read them in order of publication, other suggest starting with various groupings of books, such as the Night Watch series, the Death series, or the novels centered around the Witches. If you want a description of some of the story arcs within the Discworld books, see the article at Wikipedia.

My plan is to read Mort next, the first book in the Death series. I also have the book that follows that, Reaper Man. Then I will move on to Guards! Guards!, the first novel featuring Sam Vimes and the City Watch, a series that has been highly recommended.

I just recently discovered this article at NPR Books which is titled There's No Wrong Place To Start Reading Pratchett.

Also see the reviews at read_warbler for The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.


-----------------------------

Publisher:   Signet, 1988 (orig. pub. 1986). 
Length:       255 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       Book #1 in the Discworld series
Genre:        Fantasy
Source:      Borrowed this book from my son.