Oh my, with some bookkeeping on my table to be done this weekend I think I’ll do this first – LOL.   In 6 Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate at She Reads Novels we have the general category“Travel Books” selected as the starter and I love travel books – the good ones anyway.  LOL!    

I’ll go with TRAVELS IN SIBERIAn – by Ian Frazier which I read prior to my current blog so I have no url  (2011)  but I loved it and it was quite popular at the time.  This is not one of the usually selected quintessential travelogues, but it’s one of the contemporary classics I think of when I think “travelogue,” From Moscow or St. Petersburg, several times across, Frazier makes his way by land across Russia toVladivostok and on. This got incredible reviews and a few awards as well.
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From Siberia we go to THE TREE LINE: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence which was published in 2021. This is a climate change book and Rawlence travels the northern tree line around the globe. “The arctic tree line is the northernmost latitude in the Northern Hemisphere where trees can grow; farther north, it is too cold all year round to sustain trees.[21] Extremely low temperatures, especially when prolonged, can freeze the internal sap of trees, killing them.”  (Actual trees- not shrubs.)  
NOTE!!!! The tree line is moving further and further north as the earth warms and human populations are being affected. This was a very good book after I got into it and by the time I finished I was incredulous – oh dear!  
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And since I’’m in the arctic lands I’ll just go a bit south to Alberta, Canada for a book called FIRE WEATHER: A True Story From a Hotter World by John Vaillant in which a gigantic, enormous fire is being experienced as a consequence of global warming – (2023) 

Valiant tells us the whole story of the Fort McMurray Fire of 2016. This was Alberta’s largest wildfire evacuation and the costliest disaster in Canadian history. By “whole story” I mean he covers the origins of the forest, the origins of what we know as western civilization up there which came with the oil industry, the way bitumen works, and the troubles it’s all causing.  The main idea though, is that scientists have been warning us for generations now and – this is what it’s like – it’s worse than
they thought. 
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Fire Weather makes me think of CITY ON FIRE (2022) by one of my favorite crime writers, Don Winslow. This is the first book in a trilogy about a boy who grows up near Providence on the Atlantic coast of Rhode Island. Danny Ryan gets involved with his father’s Irish group of hard-working, hard drinking, hard playing commercial fishermen who, along with their kids, get into some drugs and then gang activity. But the “good guy” Danny Ryan,  commits his own crimes after which he takes his suddenly motherless infant son to Las Vegas, where his mother already lives and where there are different and more powerful gangs. 
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So then I can’t help but think of another book with the same title (!) CITY ON FIRE. which was written by Garth Risk Hallberg and published in 2015. This one concerns New York City in the 1970s – mostly 1977 and hits the tensions, the arts, the kids, the music, plus a little who-done-it thrown in.

It’s not much of a “separation” but how could I resist when I read two pretty good books with the same title? In my defense they’re not the same city and it’s not the same fire – LOL!
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And for the 6th book in this little “chain of separation,” (ha! – see below) I’ve come up with THE FIRE NEXT TIME by James Baldwin (1963) This now classic addresses race, racism, poverty and injustice between blacks and whites in the US. I’m wondering how his book compares to the Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015 and which I did read). Re the Baldwin, it’s only been about 60 years. (!!!)

I’ve not read this but it’s in my Wish List at Audible, it’s short, and I want to get to it right now – but I’ve still got that bookkeeping to do.  From here I know I could get very political for several books,  but we’re all spared by the number 6.  

Also – (P.S.) About midway through this post I got to suspecting I was supposed to see how far separated I could get with these 6 degrees but I couldn’t help myself having read two books with the same title AND each with a rating of 9, both since 2015. I’ll do better next time.