Six Degrees of Separation: From Lonely Planet's Best Ever Photography Tips to ....

 

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Usually Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point, but for April's Six Degrees the instructions were to find a travel guide such as a Lonely Planet title or an Eyewitness title.

So the first book in my Six Degrees chain will be Lonely Planet's Best Ever Photography Tips. It features "45 practical tips and ten golden rules from award-winning travel photographer Richard I'Anson." My husband is and always has been interested in photography and he has many books on the subject.

1st degree:

My first book is also from my husband's shelves: A Wandering Eye: Travels with My Phone by Miguel Flores-Vianna. The book is filled with photos taken with his smart phone while traveling. There are some really gorgeous pictures in this book.

2nd degree:

Continuing the theme of photography, my next book is Plates + Dishes: The Food and Faces of the Roadside Diner by Stephan Schacher. This is a fantastic book, following Schacher's travels from New York up into Canada, starting with Ontario, going across to the Yukon, into Alaska, back down through British Columbia into the US. In the US he covered the western coast states, then some midwestern states, through the deep South, and back up to New York. His plan was to document the diners he visited. Per Publishers Weekly, he visited  "70 highway eating establishments, and photographed the food he ate and the women who served it to him." He made the trip using various vehicles: a Volkswagen van, a motor home, and a motorcycle. This edition was published in 2005, and Schacher's travels appear to have taken place between 2002 and 2004. There isn't much text in this book, just an introduction. The focus is really on the photos.

3rd degree:

The next link is one of our cookbooks, Retro Diner: Comfort Food from the American Roadside by Linda Everett. The book contains recipes for diner food and also includes photos of the exteriors and interiors of some old diners. We have used at least one of the recipes because we have notes in the book on suggested changes. 

4th degree:

At this point I will move toward fiction. In The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, Cora and Nick Papadakis own and operate a small diner in rural California, not far from Los Angeles. Cora is sick of her husband and tired of running the diner. Frank Chambers, a drifter, has just arrived in the area and does some odd jobs for Nick. Frank wants Cora to leave her husband behind and drift around the country with him. The book is very well written, but too dark and dreary for me. 

5th degree:

Even though the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout feature a lot of gourmet foods and situations focused on food and eating, Archie Goodwin often visits diners to eat, when he just wants to eat plain food, or when he isn't getting along with Wolfe, or he is out doing some errands for Wolfe. In Plot it Yourself, a mystery about authors, publishers, and plagiarism, Archie twice mentions going to Bert's Diner around the corner on Tenth Avenue near Wolfe's brownstone. Early in the book, Archie says: "I eat in the dining room with Wolfe, except when we are not speaking; then I join Fritz and Theodore in the kitchen, or get invited somewhere, or take a friend to a restaurant, or go to Bert’s diner around the corner on Tenth Avenue and eat beans." Towards the end of the book, when he thinks he will be having a meatless dinner with Wolfe at home, he considers going to Bert's to "eat hamburgers and slaw and discuss the world situation for an hour or so." Thinking about these connections motivated me to reread this book in late March.

6th degree:

I decided to stick with a novel by Rex Stout in this last link. Black Orchids collects two novellas, "Black Orchids" and "Cordially Invited to Meet Death." As I noted above, food is very important in the Nero Wolfe stories. Usually Wolfe doesn't like to have anything to do with women, but somehow, in "Cordially Invited to Meet Death," he ends up with one in his kitchen, where he is experimenting with making corned beef hash. She offers to help. 

"... corned beef hash is one of my specialties. Nothing in there but meat, is there?”

“As you see,” Wolfe grunted.

“It’s ground too fine,” Maryella asserted. 

Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz's cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life's toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone. To tone down the corned flavor and yet preserve its unique quality, to remove the curse of its dryness without making it greasy—the theories and experiments had gone on for years. He scowled at her but he didn't order her out.

"Cordially Invited to Meet Death" is one of my favorite Nero Wolfe stories.

My Six Degrees took me from traveling and photography to roadside diners, to mysteries with an emphasis on food.  If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on May 4th, 2024 and the starting book will be The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop.