It’s time for another adventure in Kate’s 6 Degrees of Separation Meme from her blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best. We are given a book to start with, and from there we free associate six books.
Today’s starting point is a favorite of mine, the novella We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.
first degree
Jeannette Walls’s father had big plans to someday build a glass castle, which she describes in her memoir The Glass Castle.
second degree
The word castle also figures in the title of The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.
third degree
Evelyn Hardcastle’s deaths greatly outnumber the single one in Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton.
fourth degree
Because it’s easy to confuse the seeming ramblings of someone with dementia with gossip, and because Jenny Cooper may or may not have caused a few deaths over the years, my next offering is Jenny Cooper Has a Secret by Joy Fielding.
fifth degree
And because Jenny Cooper isn’t the only one with a secret, we move on to Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees.
sixth degree
Sticking with secrets, we end up with The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I’ve read this book twice and was sure I’d reviewed it, but either I misremember or the review has gotten lost during one of the many reiterations of Notes in the Margin.
I look forward to reading how your journey through 6 Degrees of Separation went this month.
© 2025 by Mary Daniels Brown
I only read The Secret Life of Bees last year which seems way too late!
I enjoyed your chain!
Thanks, Marg! The Secret Life of Bees is pretty timeless. I’m glad you read it. Did you enjoy it?
I’m so pleased to see that We Have Always Lived in the Castle seems to be such a popular choice as a starter – many of us love it!
And we love it for good (though maybe different) reasons, don’t we? Thanks for commenting, MarinaSofia.
I haven’t yet read We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I think I should remedy that.
It surely is thought provoking. And even if you end up not liking it, it’s short!
Short is good, at this point!