6 Degrees of Separation: Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly book meme hosted by Books Are My Best and Favorite. A chain of 6 books is linked somehow–whether to all books or only to the one before it. A common book is given each month with which to start the chain.

My Chain

The obvious first link is the author’s previous First Lady novel, An American Wife, which I loved. It is the fictionalized story of POTUS #43 and his school librarian wife.

My second link is to another fictionalized first lady, this time the poster girl of the breed, Jaqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis in The Editor: A Novel by Steven Rowley.

The Editor led me to Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott which is not a book I’ve ever reviewed but one that is renown for it’s advice to writers on editing. It’s the book that says to write a lot of “shitty first drafts.”

Bird by Bird, led me to super bird woman Phoebe Snetsinger who made birding into an obsessive quest for the ultimate Life List of birds seen and observed: Life List: One Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds.

Phoebe and her fellow birders were often friends as well as birders or even competitors. That reminded me of a little book I ran across, but have not read, that coincidentally is tied to Jackie Kennedy by virtue of its author being her step-father, novelist Hugh D. Achincloss: Love Without Wings: Some Friendships in Literature and Politics, which I have added to my TBR. “Hugh-D” knew everyone so it should be interesting.

Birds and editors and political elites all led me to H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald. T.H. White, the other subject of the book, wrote about King Arthur and the political intrigue in his court at Camelot that involved friends and even lovers.. Jack and Jackie Kennedy ruled over the modern Camelot–at least according to the press of the day. The musical Camelot was a favorite of the President’s.

So we went from a First Lady who didn’t become a first lady in the novel to a First Lady who did become First Lady in the novel to a First Lady with a post-White House career as an editor to an editor on writing who titled her book Bird By Bird to a biography of a birder to a book of letters without wings to, finally, a book with birds, and a writer whose subject was political elites and their intrigues.