Six Degrees of Separation: Vanity Fair

This month’s Six Degrees starting book is Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery. I first read “selected excerpts” from it in an anthology in my high school British Literature class. I finally read the book in its entirety in the Peace Corps in 1990 and loved it. All of my books today center on women with messy lives like Becky Sharpe

Anna Karenina is another amazing woman with a messy life! After Gone With the Wind, it is also my “next favorite” big novel.

The original brought to mind this marvelous modern retelling: What Happened to Anna K–the messy life of a rich younger wife of an older man.

How much messier can a life get? How about a husband and lovers in two different centuries? I haven’t read the others–too much icky sex for me, but you have to give it to Clare–that’s one heck of a messy life! Outlander.

Princess Margaret may have been royal, but she had a true mess of a life at times!99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret.

Sweet, smiling Ma on tv’s Little House on the Prairie made 70’s mothers cringe at their own sharp tongues and short tempers! But maybe Ma was only “keeping sweet??” Ma had a pretty messy life with that rascal Charles Ingalls. Caroline: Little House Revisited.

First Ladies have to be pictuer perfect even when their lives are messy. Lady Reporters must be on top of their game even when their lives are messy. When the two women get close the facade of their lives could not crack no matter the hurrican level mess of their lives.  Loving Eleanor.

Do you like compiling lists like this? Why not join in the next month when the starting book with be Dickens’ Christmas Carol? You can read more about Six Degrees of Separation here. Thanks to Books Are My Favorite and Best for hosting this fun monthly event.