Happy 4th of July! Hope you are all doing well. I’m enjoying day of reading and crafting but it is time for  Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with the book chosen for the month and connect the following six books. Where will you end up?

This month’s book is What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt. It’s a book about an art historian who buys an extraordinary painting and tracks down the artist and begins a life-long friendship. I have not read this book but it has been on my wishlist because I love novels that have an art theme to them and with that in mind let’s go on a bit of an art adventure via books.

I chose The Art Resorter by Julian Sanchez next because this is a novel that features a character to travels from New York to Spain to visit the opening of an art museum and meets an art restorer.

Being able to restore a masterpiece is an artistic endeavor in itself but what if you aren’t restoring but forging? So that led me to The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber. A talented painter who happens to imitate artists like Leonardo, Goya and Gainsborough. A novel about secrets and murder.

What if the forgery became famous though? So that led me to The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith. A rare 17th Century painting by a Dutch artists links three lives but is the painting real?

Speaking of Dutch artists, I can’t help but think of one my favorite painters, Vincent Van Gogh and that is the next link to The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh edited by Mark Roskill. I read this book several years ago and found it to be fascinating glimpse into his life.

As I think of favorite artists, I can’t help but think of one of my absolute favorites, Frida Kahlo and so the next link is Frida by Barbara Mujica. This is a fictional novel about her life and of course that of Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican muralist.

Finally for the next link, is another famous Diego, the Spanish painter Diego Velasquez whose work is the center of The Vanishing Velasquez by Laura Cumming.

So while we may not be able to visit museums at this time of staying home and social distancing at least we do have some Virtual Tours we can do and of course rely on books to let us look at the lives of artists.

I hope you get to play in Six Degrees. Again, thank you to Kate and look forward to seeing your lists!

I had planned to do a month wrap up yesterday but then I got sidetracked by work. So here we are in July and I wish I could say things were better but here in Texas the COVID-19 cases are really alarming and what is so unbelievable to me is that people still don’t seem to take this seriously.

I wish right now I would be talking about our vacation instead. Normally around this time of the year I’m putting my blog on vacation mode. I know many of you have had to cancel plans too. If only we knew when this was going to end right?

So yes, we would have been off to Germany tomorrow. While that’s not happening, what I am planning to do this weekend is enjoy a couple of days off and read and relax. I’ve been under a lot of pressure and I need to distract myself with books and crafts.

My reading which had been going so well in May kind of tanked in June. No thanks to a couple of DNFs. Granted the three books I finished were fabulous: We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Enchantment of the Greengage Tree and I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.

If I can ever get caught up on reviews I will tell you more about those but if you are at all wondering about them add them to your wishlist. As far as reading plans for this month, I just hope for no more DNFs. What about you, any reading plans for June?