Tag Archives: Umberto Eco

Six degrees of separation: from New York to the Atlantic

Posted on by
29

 

#6Degrees

Six degrees of separation:
from beach reading to beach walking

Time flies so fast, it’s only by visiting another blogger that I reaized I had missed to post last Saturday for this meme. I double checked that I have the date scheduled for next post in March!
My quirky rules were challenged with this one word title we had to start from. Apparetly, I haven’t read any book with the word trust in the title, which I actually find surprising.
I did read a book by another Diaz, but I found it so so bad that I certainly do not want to feature it here.
Trust was published in May 2022, so I went with another book published in May 2022 – at least in one of its English translations (I read it in the original – French).

Using my own rules for this fun meme hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest
(see there the origin of the meme and how it works
– posted the first Saturday of every month).

Here are my own quirky rules:

1. Use your list of books on Goodreads
2. Take the first word of the title (or in the subtitle) offered and find another title with that word in it – see the titles below the images to fully understand, as often the word could be in the second part of the title
3. Then use the first word of THAT title to find your text title
4. Or the second if the title starts with the same word, or if you are stuck
5. To help you understand what I’m doing, you will find in orange the word that will be used in the following title, and in green the word used in the previous title

six-degrees-of-separation 0223

 

We are supposed to start from Trust, by Hernan Diaz (published in May 2022).
I have not read it, nor plan to do so.

1. A Single Rose, by Muriel Barbery (published in May 2022)
Each word seems chiseled. The result is an amazing gem.
See my short review.

2.  The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
I so enjoyed it, but read it in French a few decades ago, way before the existence of this blog. Totally time to reread it, in Italian this time!

3. My Name is Asher Lev, by Chaim Potok
The comment for #2 fits perfectly for this one as well!
I so liked it that I devoured in a row all the books by Potok – yes, I was just as book obsessed in my younger years, lol.

4. The Year of My Life, by Kobayashi Issa
This was a book I cherished a lot last year. I have lots of notes, and haven’t published them yet!!

5. A Hundred Million Years and a Day, by Jean-Baptiste Andrea
VERDICT: Beautifully written and remarkable narrative about following one’s dreams, and human behavior in harsh conditions. I promise you, you won’t forget this expedition! 
Read my full review

6. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms & a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester
This is the most thorough “biography” I have ever read, and the most entertaining as well. One thing I would like to highlight, however, is the plan of the book, a genius idea I believe. 
Read my full review

So I didn’t have far to go: I started in New York, where Trust is set, and ended up in the Atlantic!

📚📚📚

Visit other chains here

📚📚📚

HAVE YOU READ AND ENJOYED ANY OF THESE BOOKS?
IF YOU HAVE CREATED A CHAIN,
PLEASE LEAVE YOUR LINK IN A COMMENT

Advertisement

Six degrees of separation: from beach reading to beach walking

Posted on by
17

 

#6Degrees

Six degrees of separation:
from beach reading to beach walking

Time for another quirky variation on this meme – and quite quirky!
I decided to include more books that are on my Goodreads TBR,
and not just stick to books I have read, to bring in more diversity,
and I was shocked I ended up on the beach, where I started!

Using my own rules for this fun meme hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest
(see there the origin of the meme and how it works
– posted the first Saturday of every month).

Here are my own quirky rules:

1. Use your list of books on Goodreads
2. Take the first word of the title (or in the subtitle) offered and find another title with that word in it – see the titles below the images to fully understand, as often the word could be in the second part of the title
3. Then use the first word of THAT title to find your text title
4. Or the second if the title starts with the same word, or if you are stuck
5. To help you understand what I’m doing, you will find in orange the word that will be used in the following title, and in green the word used in the previous title

 

six-degrees-of-separation

We are supposed to start from Beach Read, by Emily Henry.
I have not read it, nor plan to do so.

1. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties, by Noël Riley Fitch
I did warn you it was going to be even more quirky!
So from beach in the title, I went to beach as the author’s name.
“The story of Sylvia Beach’s love for Shakespeare and Company supplies the lifeblood of this book.” Definitelyone I want to read.

 

2.  A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar
And we are going back to an author’s name, using a word form the previous title!
I did read this one. This is the thorough biography of “John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s.”
It is actually a very sad story. It’s one the rare cases where I found the movie better than the book, in the sense that in the movie, Nash’s wife is full of loving care for him.
In real life, they divorced, and things were very difficult, as can be expected with such a disturbed genius.

3. The Most Beautiful Book in the World, by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
I have read and really enjoyed several books by this Belgian author, like Oscar and the Lady in Pink, and Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Qur’an, but I still have to read this one, which is actually a collection of 8 novellas.

4. The Fictional 100: Ranking the Most Influential Characters in World Literature and Legend, by Lucy Pollard-Gott
I have reviewed and often recommended this book, written by a book reviewer and friend.
VERDICT: Smart presentation and ranking of literary characters, across countries and times. If you believe in diversity in literature and consider yourself a lover of books, you absolutely need to have this reference volume on your shelf.

5. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, by Umberto Eco 
Umberto is such an amazing author, novelist of course, but also essayist (I so enjoyed Chronicles of a Liquid Society), professor of semiotics, and author of many books on language. 
This book was originally a The Charles Eliot Norton Lecture.
REading the synopsis, you can understand why it would be on my TBR:
“In Six Walks in the Fictional Woods Umberto Eco shares with us his Secret Life as a reader–his love for MAD magazine, for Scarlett O’Hara, for the nineteenth-century French novelist Nerval’s Sylvie, for Little Red Riding Hood, Agatha Christie, Agent 007 and all his ladies. We see, hear, and feel Umberto Eco, the passionate reader who has gotten lost over and over again in the woods, loved it, and come back to tell the tale, The Tale of Tales. Eco tells us how fiction works, and he also tells us why we love fiction so much. This is no deconstructionist ripping the veil off the Wizard of Oz to reveal his paltry tricks, but the Wizard of Art himself inviting us to join him up at his level, the Sorcerer inviting us to become his apprentice.”

6. Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, by Ben Shattuck
Yes, I do have 2 books on my TBR starting with “six walks!”
I added this one after I recently read two books by Thoreau, and an excellent one on him. See my review: Lessons from Walden: Thoreau and the Crisis of American Democracy,
by Bob Pepperman Taylor.

Here is the synopsis for this one:
“On an autumn morning in 1849, Henry David Thoreau stepped out his front door to walk the beaches of Cape Cod. Over a century and a half later, Ben Shattuck does the same. With little more than a loaf of bread, brick of cheese, and a notebook, Shattuck sets out to retrace Thoreau’s path through the Cape’s outer beaches, from the elbow to Provincetown’s fingertip.”

And here you go: from beach reading, to a book about walking the beaches!

📚📚📚

Visit other chains here

📚📚📚

HAVE YOU READ AND ENJOYED ANY OF THESE BOOKS?
IF YOU HAVE CREATED A CHAIN,
PLEASE LEAVE YOUR LINK IN A COMMENT

Nonfiction November 2022: New on my TBR

Posted on by
32

Nonfiction November 2022

#NonficNov
#nonfictionbookparty: Instagram Daily Challenge
Click on the logo to see the detailed schedule

Here is the topic for Week 5:
New to my TBR
hosted by Jaymi @ The OC Book Girl

New to My TBR : It’s been a month full of amazing nonfiction books!
Which ones have made it onto your TBR?
Be sure to link back to the original blogger who posted about that book!

November ended up being more busy than expected, so I didn’t visit as many bloggers as intended. But looking back at the nonfiction books I added on my TBR in Nonfiction November 2021, I realized I only read 3 out of 17.
So I guess it’s not a bad thing I’m not adding as many this year!
Here they are, with the blog where I found them:

AnnaBookBel

1. Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree: Getting to know trees through the language of scent, by David George Haskell

A Web of Stories

2. The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry that Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak

Book’d Out

3. The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience, and the Secret World of Sleep, by Guy Leschziner

Let’s read

4. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan

Readerbuzz

5. Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, by Cecily Wong
6. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong

What’s Nonfiction?

7. The Return of the Russian Leviathan, by Sergei Medvedev

This November, I actually added 6 more titles, but the source was not participants in Nonfiction November:

  1. The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human, by Siddhartha Mukherjee
  2. Web3 Simplified – A Beginners Guide to Blockchain, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, NFT’s, the Metaverse and more, by Steve Sarner
  3. The Art of Memory, by Frances A. Yates
  4. Englishwoman in America, by Isabella Lucy Bird
  5. The Life of Isabella Bird, by Anna M. Stoddart
  6. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, by Umberto Eco

WHAT GREAT NONFICTION BOOK
HAVE YOU RECENTLY ADDED TO YOUR TBR?
PLEASE SHARE YOUR LINK IF YOU POSTED