This month’s game of Six Degrees, hosted by Books are my Favourite and Best, begins with Life of M by Rachel Cusk. That’s not a book that I’ve heard of. It sounds unusual. I’ll be interested to find out if others have read it and what they thought.

A theme explored by Life of M is fame. That is also a theme in a book that I’ve been enjoying, A Witch in Notting Hill by Alexandra Paige. I’ll publish that review around Halloween. But here’s a sneak preview — some of the characters in the book are clearly inspired by the movie Notting Hill.

A witch in London brought to mind a story about a witch in Oxford, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. This book was made into a TV series. Has anyone seen it? I usually like Matthew Goode, so maybe I want to consider watching that this month.

I enjoy books set in Oxford. A recent favorite was My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan. I felt like I was living my fantasy of spending a college year in Oxford, something I dreamed about in the early 1980s but had no means to implement.

Julia Whelan is an audiobook narrator as well as a novelist. She both wrote and narrated Thank You for Listening, a novel about an audiobook narrator. I enjoyed that so much! I especially loved telling people that I was listening to an audiobook about an audiobook narrator.

All this talk of audiobooks reminded me that it’s been a while since I listened to one. I seem to be on a kick of listening to podcasts, often political ones. I suspect that audiobooks are better for my mental and emotional health.

So, I looked up what other books have been narrated by Julia Whelan. There are many! But the one that I’m putting next on my TBR is Band of Sisters by Lauren Willig. Band of Sisters is inspired by a true story of alumni of Smith College who go to France at the height of World War I to provide aid.

I’ve read lots of books set around the time of World War II and very few around the time of World War I. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson is set in the immediate aftermath of World War I and explores around themes of work, recovery, and the roles of women.

This six-degree chain took us from an unusual book about fame through witches into audiobooks and landed us in World War I.