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.
For July we start with a book that everyone’s talking about – Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke. According to Goodreads, in this currently popular novel “A traditional American woman, a ‘tradwife’ influencer, suddenly awakens in the brutal reality of 1855.”
first degree
Like Natalie Heller Mills of Yesteryear, Billy Pilgrim of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five “has come unstuck in time.”
second degree
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) was a great influence during my formative years. Another such book was Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller.
third degree
Yet another influential book was The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
fourth degree
Rye is a grain used in the production of rye whiskey. Scotch is also a variety of whisky, even though it’s spelled differently. The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight, in which a young woman travels from Canada to attend the University of Edinburgh, is set in Scotland.
fifth degree
The It Girl by Ruth Ware also centers around a university campus (Oxford).
sixth degree
Oxford and environs is also the setting of the Inspector Morse series of mysteries by Colin Dexter. The first book in the series is The Last Bus to Woodstock.
This month’s starting novel has taken me on a memorable journey through time. Where did your 6 Degrees of Separation list take you this month?
© 2026 by Mary Daniels Brown
