Six Degrees of Separation - Like Water for Hot Chocolate

Last weekend, I was clearing out the shed where I store boxes of books acquired nearly 20 years ago. There were a few reading memories there, I can tell you. On the shelves, I found my copy of Like Water for Hot Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. I remember buying it on a lunchtime walk to Paperchain Bookstore in Manuka. In those days, a friend and I often spent our lunch hours walking to the bookshop, browsing the shelves, and inevitably carrying something new back to the office. Like Water for Hot Chocolate is this month's choice for 6 Degrees of Separation. 

You might already know that Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman began the 6 Degrees of Separation meme in 2014 and now it is managed (is that the right word?) by Kate at Books are my favourite and best. The idea is that Kate nominates a book and, on the first Saturday of the month, participants reveal chains of six books that all connect in some way. If you are curious to see where other people's reading leads them, Kate's blog is a good place to begin. But I owe my introduction to Whispering Gums, another very good place to start.

So where will Like Water for Hot Chocolate lead? There are a few paths we could take to begin - Chocolat by Joanne Harris; perhaps to Isabel Allende who I also discovered at Paperchain. But as Like Water for Hot Chocolate is 'a novel in monthly instalments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies', it has made me think of another book about cooking - Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. Do you remember it? Blogger Julie spends a year recreating the 524 recipes Julia Child included in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Still on the cooking in fiction theme, my next book is a novel, The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. It also includes recipes but these were secondary to the story of a widowed American food writer who travels to Beijing to unravel her husband's past and her own present. 

The Taste of Memory leaps to mind. Marion Halligan's memoir about food and families and life is one of the few books with recipes I've read where I did attempt one of her recipes. For a little while there, I made her pizza dough - until Jim broke a tooth biting into it. Let's blame the cook, not the recipe. It's still one of my favourite books about life in Canberra and also in France.

Food is very much on my mind because now I'm thinking about the series of archaeological detective fiction created by LJM Owens, another Canberra writer. In the first book in the series, Olmec Obitutary, librarian and super sleuth Dr Elizabeth Pimms is adjusting to life in Canberra, only to be distracted by the mystery of a royal Olmec cemetery. 

Suddenly I'm not thinking about food at all. Now I'm onto graveyards. Specifically Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, which is set in London's Highgate Cemetery. I wanted to love this book as much as I loved her first novel, The Time Traveller's Wife. I didn't, but Highgate Cemetery was a very impressive character.

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, on the other hand, will stay with me forever. I discovered Gaiman relatively recently (I know, the rest of the world fell in love with him years ago). I adore that moment of discovery. The Graveyard Book tells the story of Bod Owens, who is adopted by the supernatural inhabitants of a graveyard after his parents are murdered. I seem to recall food playing an important part in the story too. Bod's adopted family have no need of food - unlike Bod himself.

We haven't travelled very far today, have we? We began with recipes and magic in Mexico and we've ended with food and fantasy in England, with short visits to New York, France, China, Canberra, France, Canberra, and Mexico in between. 

Next month, it's back to the 80s with Bret Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero. 

PS Thank you to those who have commented on previous posts. Being a 'comments novice', I've only just discovered them lurking, waiting to be published! Will try to get myself organised so it doesn't happen again. It was great to hear from you.