I always want to play to this delightful monthly bookish game held by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best, but I actually rarely post about it, I mostly have fun playing around in my head with book titles. I’m awfully slow with this game, but this time I’d love to be able to post before the end of the month! (Just for your information, this post draft has been sitting there for more than 2 weeks, and has actually barely escaped the trash…)

This month’s starting book is Passages by Gail Sheehy, a non-fiction book published in 1976 that I haven’t even heard about. The blurb says that it’s a classic bestseller, but for sure it wasn’t at my parents’ home. The word that set my imagination on is Passage, and therefore I got to another book I haven’t read.
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster is a classic bestseller of another genre, but I’ve always been too intimidated to read it. I’ve read other books by Forster but my memory is totally blurred and I might have just watched the movies. For this one, I know something ambiguous and mysterious and scandalous happens in a cave in India, and I never got past this.


Another book where something mysterious and scandalous happens to women in frilly Victorian dresses in a natural setting is Picnic at Hanging Rocks by Joan Lindsay. This one I watched the movie and read at a young age (possibly too young to understand any double entendre).
I have an inclination for boarding school novels where things are not always as proper as one might think. That’s why my next move is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, where a school mistress has a clear influence on her students, and not for the best. Of course, from there I could have doubled down on boarding school and Maggie Smith (who is Miss Brodie in the 1969 movie) by pivoting to Harry Potter… but no, too obvious. I could have gone to another manipulative teacher and pivot to Donna Tartt’s Secret History, but I didn’t want to stay in a school environment.


Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News is one of her novels featuring Jackson Brodie. Miss Jean Brodie and Jackson Brodie indeed share the same family name, could they be related? I don’t really think so. Jackson Brodie is a tough guy with a tender heart, and while Miss Jean Brodie is a strong woman of her own, we’re left wondering about the heart. Anyway, Jackson Brodie is played in the TV adaptation by Jason Isaacs, who has also played another character from popular fiction…
Isaacs is the famous Captain Hook from John Matthew Barrie’s Peter Pan. To be honest, I’m not a fan of the story. Fairies and pirates and Wendy playing the little mother for everyone. I confess that I’ve not read the book. I know that there are plenty of retellings for this classics, but so far I have not been tempted (I’ve heard great things of Alias Hook by Lisa Jensen though). It’s a slightly long jump, but I’m going to go with another retelling with one of those secondary figures that are supposed to be passive and perfect.


I’ve read The Penelopiad an eternity ago (16 years?), but I still remember it vividly. By removing the spotlight on Odysseus I discovered the power of retelling and paying attention to characters who have been ignored and belittled by the traditional (male) views.
I’m not quite sure how to conclude this 6 steps fun adventure. I feel that I’ve really gone a long way from a personal development non-fiction back to the Antiquity by way of Scotland and the Pirates island… What would be your own chain?