Six in Six is a celebration of the half-way point of the reading year hosted by The Book Jotter. This is my first time participating, but Six in Six is marking its 10th anniversary! Thanks to Marianne of the Let’s Read blog for introducing me to this event.

Participants choose six books in each of six categories from the first six months of the year. Jo at The Book Jotter has a bunch of suggestions. She invites us to invent our own categories, but I found plenty to work with from her list.

Six trips to Europe

Traveling to Europe is one of my favorite things to do with books, so I have plenty of books to choose from in the first half of the year.

• The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles (Paris)
• 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard (Ireland)
• A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear (England)
• The Huntress by Kate Quinn (Russia, Austria, and more)
• Once a Spy by Mary Jo Putney (England, Belgium, and France)
• Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier (Ireland)

Six books that took me on extraordinary journeys

I like the phrase “extraordinary journey” because it can mean so many things.

• The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (to many places in this world and others)
• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (along The Lincoln Highway, natch, beginning in Nebraska)
• Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult (to the Galapagos and unexpected places)
• The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (through a little of England and lots of France, searching for the truth)
• The Huntress by Kate Quinn (all over Europe, searching for a person or, maybe, for peace)
• Your Head is a Houseboat: A Chaotic Guide to Mental Clarity by Campbell Walker (to the inside of my head, a most fascinating place to visit)

Six From the Non-Fiction Shelf

I always like to highlight the non-fiction since it often doesn’t get as much attention in the book blogosphere.

• The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America by Marcus J. Moore
• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
• At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Six books that took me by the hand and led me into the past

This was another category where I had a lot to choose from, both fiction and non-fiction.

• The Alice Network by Kate Quinn (to WWI and just after WWII)
• Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (to the 1950s)
• Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell (to the Revolutionary War era)
• Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran (to successive generations of the US failing black communities, even when we promise to do better)
• The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (WWII)
• Once Dishonored by Mary Jo Putney (The Regency)

Six authors I have read before

• Brené Brown. Atlas of the Heart in 2022. Previously, The Gifts of Imperfection, Braving the Wilderness, and more.
• Mary Jo Putney. Books 4, 5, and 6 in the Rogues Redeemed series in 2022. Previously, everything she’s written, I think.
• Kate Quinn. The Diamond Eye, The Alice Network, and The Huntress in 2022. Previously, The Rose Code.
• Nora Roberts. The Becoming in 2022. Previously, pretty much everything she’s written since sometime in the early 2000s.
• J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts, but I’m going to count her twice). Abandoned in Death in 2022. Previously, all the …in Death novels.
• Jacqueline Winspear. A Sunlit Weapon in 2022. Previously, all the Masie Dobbs novels.

Six book covers I love

I used them to decorate this post, but in case you want to see them in list form, here they are:

• • Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  • Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
  • The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
  • The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America by Marcus J. Moore
  • The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
  • The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

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  I thought that the Sunday Salon crowd would enjoy knowing about this event. Jo at The Book Jotter invites us to write our Six in Six posts sometime in July, so there is still lots of time to participate.