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This monthly meme is hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It sounds like loads of fun, so I thought I’d try my hand at it. On the first Saturday of 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 ones next to it in the chain. Everyone starts with the same book, and it’s fun to see the different connections people make, and where they end up. Remember to post a link or just comment your chain over on Kate’s blog!

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This month we’re starting with I Want Everything by Dominic Amerena. I haven’t read this book but Goodreads tells me that the story is about an author who vanished after being accused of plagiarism.

A (real life) author who has been accused of plagiarism is J.K. Rowling, who was accused by Paul Allen, representing the estate of Adrian Jacobs, of borrowing from Jacobs’ book, The Adventures of Willy the Wizard, for her fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which Rowling vehemently denies.

Incidentally, I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the ‘more than a million copies sold’ prompt in the 52 Book Club 2025 Reading Challenge. Another book I read for the 52 Book Club 2025 Reading Challenge is February Dragon by Colin Thiele, a YA book about bushfires, first published in 1965.

Another YA book about bushfires first published in 1965 is Ash Road by Ivan Southall. While I certainly enjoyed February Dragon, I much preferred Ash Road. Southall has a true talent with words which had me fully immersed in the story. Before the fire, I could feel the hot, dry wind on my face, smell the gum trees, see the haze in the air. When the fire came, I could hear the roar in my ears, taste the smoke on my tongue, feel the sting in my eyes and the burning heat on my skin. Is it any wonder that this book won the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Children’s Book of the Year Award: Older Readers in 1966?

Speaking of the CBCA Children’s Book of the Year Award: Older Readers, in 1993 this award was won by the acclaimed novel, Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, about an Italian-Australian teenager, Josie, living with her mother in Glebe, an inner-western suburb in Sydney. While dealing with a bunch of crap on top of all the normal stuff that comes along with adolescence, Josie confides in a boy with a bad reputation and the two become romantically involved, leading to complications and angst.

From YA novels to plays, another book with a teen girl dealing with a bunch of crap on top of all the normal stuff that comes along with adolescence, and confiding in a boy with a bad reputation, becoming romantically involved, leading to complications and angst, is The Peach Season by Debra Oswald, a play about love; the heady stubbornness of first love, and the, sometimes suffocating, love of a traumatised, overprotective mother for her only child. The Peach Season is one of only a handful of plays I’ve had the opportunity to see performed live.

As a young girl, I was incredibly privileged to attend one of the great Ruth Cracknell’s final performances as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. She passed away just a decade later. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of two plays (the other being An Ideal Husband) in one of the books I’m currently reading, that being The Plays of Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (Wordsworth Classics).

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From a literary hoax to the political and romantic manoeuvrings of the 19th century, with a good representation of Australian literature in between, that’s my 6 degrees for the month of October. I wonder where the next month will take me?

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November starter: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

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© Adele Walker October 2025