The Content Reader

Six Degrees of Separation , is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best . Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain. This month start with  Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. It won the Man Booker Prize in 2017. I have not read it. It is about Abraham Lincoln's son William who died at a young age, and deals with loss. "Bardo" seems to mean an intermediate space between life and rebirth. That thought leads me to One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It has a magical realism, and it seems to take place in a, not entirely, human world. It follows a family through a hundred years, a family with a supernatural aura around it. It is a real world, but still not. I imagine that Lincoln in the Bardo, could be something similar. Staying on in a world...

This book is part of the challenge What’s in a Name hosted by Wormhole , the first entry being a country in the title. It is also part of the challenge Full House Reading Challenge 2016 hosted by Book Date , relating to a book published in 2016.  A couple of weeks ago I went to Passa Porta here in Brussels to meet up with Yann Martel . He was here to promote his new novel The High Mountains of Portugal. I wrote about the very interesting interview in an earlier post (see link under name).  I have now finished his new book. I was not overenthusiastic about his Life of Pi , even if I might see it differently now, after hearing him talk about his writing, his thoughts and his way of seeing the world. Maybe I would have read and interpreted his new book differently if I had not heard his ideas behind the stories. Nevertheless, I loved his new book. The novel is divided into three parts, taking place in 1904, 1939 and 1989. They are about three persons, in different...

On Brona's Books I found this 'one day every fourth year' challenge. Leap Year babies will tell you how special it is to be born on the 29th February. To celebrate a once in 4 year event - go to page 29 of the book you're reading right now and copy the first sentence onto your blog or into my comments section.  Here is the first sentence, on page 29, from The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel which I am now reading:   His uncle beams, filled to the brim with pride and joy in his Gallic gewgaw.

Yann Mantel Yesterday evening I had the pleasure to 'meet' Yann Martel. He is touring Europe to promote his new The High Mountains of Portugal. It was a hilarious two hours of a philosophical and witty performance by Yann Martel. He told us about his most famous book The Life of Pi , how it came to be and how he was inspired. The discussion lingered mostly on his new book, which I of course had to buy and got it signed as well! novel Yann Martel has studied philosophy and opened up a lot of new ideas how to approach life. He seemed to have a very relaxed attitude to life in general and his writing especially. He considered himself very lucky to be a writer. Having grown up mostly abroad, his father was a diplomat, he considers travelling a way of grasping the sense of living. Looking forward to read his latest book, and will read this instead of The Knights Templar in Britain  in the challenge "What's in a Name", hosted by Wormhole . Mostly suitable fo...