I spotted this meme on the outstanding blogs of Susan at A Life in Books and Marina at Finding Time to Write. If you haven’t visited their blogs I’d recommend you do for insightful reviews, bookish observations and original poetry. The meme was created by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

From what I can gather each month starts from a different book and the aim is to move from the initial book to the sixth book with one link from the previous title. The books don’t have to be linked to each other, just the one before.

The starter book this month is Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Now I’ve not read this book, but described as a cult classic, Less Than Zero was the debut of Ellis, telling the tale of Clay, 18 and returning home for Christmas, and his hedonistic, drug-fuelled party days in LA.

Another cult classic, and another book I’ve never read is The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. The coming of age story of Maxwell Caulfield has become synonymous with teenage angst for 70 years.

Another famous Max, this time Maxim De Winter in Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. The now legendary story of the new Mrs De Winter has been immortalised on screen, most notably by the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

Another Hitchcock film based on a story previously published was Rear Window, written by Cornell Woolrich, published originally as It Had to be Murder and re-published as Rear Window in the short story collection Four Thrillers.

(image from Amazon)

Cornell Woolrich is one of the 99 authors to be featured in Christopher Fowler’s The Book of Forgotten Authors, a bibliophile’s dream, that contains the brief overview of a host of literary figures that seem to have faded from the reading public’s consciousness.

One author who is mentioned in Christopher’s book, but not as a forgotten literary star is Agatha Christie. A novelist who barely needs any introduction and who’s output was staggering (though, if you read The Book of Forgotten Authors you will find that Mrs Christies 80 something works pale in comparison to some of her peers), how to choose which of her novels to include. But by looking at where we started it seemed only fitting to end with And Then There Were None.

There we have to from Zero to None whilst weaving a rather meandering route. Where would you six degrees of separation to?

You can follow Six Degrees of Separation Twitter with the hashtag #6Degrees or of course you can see the links over at Kate’s blog.