I call it “Book Serendipity” when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common – the more bizarre, the better. This is a regular feature of mine every couple of months. Because I usually have 20–30 books on the go at once, I suppose I’m more prone to such incidents. The following are in roughly chronological order.
Last time, my biggest set of coincidences was around books set in or about Korea or by Korean authors; this time it was Ghana and Ghanaian authors:
- Reading two books set in Ghana at the same time: Fledgling by Hannah Bourne-Taylor and His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie. I had also read a third book set in Ghana, What Napoleon Could Not Do by DK Nnuro, early in the year and then found its title phrase (i.e., “you have done what Napoleon could not do,” an expression of praise) quoted in the Medie! It must be a popular saying there.
- Reading two books by young Ghanaian British authors at the same time: Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley and Maame by Jessica George.
And the rest:
- An overweight male character with gout in Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom and The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph.
- I’d never heard of “shoegaze music” before I saw it in Michelle Zauner’s bio at the back of Crying in H Mart, but then I also saw it mentioned in Pulling the Chariot of the Sun by Shane McCrae.
- Sheila Heti’s writing on motherhood is quoted in Without Children by Peggy O’Donnell Heffington and In Vitro by Isabel Zapata. Before long I got back into her novel Pure Colour. A quote from another of her books (How Should a Person Be?) is one of the epigraphs to Lorrie Moore’s I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home.
- Reading two Mexican books about motherhood at the same time: Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel and In Vitro by Isabel Zapata.
- Two coming-of-age novels set on the cusp of war in 1939: The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle and Martha Quest by Doris Lessing.
- A scene of looking at peculiar human behaviour and imagining how David Attenborough would narrate it in a documentary in Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson and I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai.
- The painter Caravaggio is mentioned in a novel (The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent) plus two poetry books (The Fourth Sister by Laura Scott and Manorism by Yomi Sode) I was reading at the same time.
- Characters are plagued by mosquitoes in The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel and Through the Groves by Anne Hull.
- Edinburgh’s history of grave robbing is mentioned in The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent and Womb by Leah Hazard.
- I read a chapter about mayflies in Lev Parikian’s book Taking Flight and then a poem about mayflies later the same day in Ephemeron by Fiona Benson.
- Childhood reminiscences about playing the board game Operation and wetting the bed appear in Homesick by Jennifer Croft and Through the Groves by Anne Hull.
- Fiddler on the Roof songs are mentioned in Through the Groves by Anne Hull and We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman.
- There’s a minor character named Frith in Shadow Girls by Carol Birch and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
- Scenes of a female couple snogging in a bar bathroom in Through the Groves by Anne Hull and The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore.
- The main character regrets not spending more time with her father before his sudden death in Maame by Jessica George and Pure Colour by Sheila Heti.
- The main character is called Mira in Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton and Pure Colour by Sheila Heti, and a Mira is briefly mentioned in one of the stories in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans.
- Macbeth references in Shadow Girls by Carol Birch and Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton – my second Macbeth-sourced title in recent times, after Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin last year.
- A ‘Goldilocks scenario’ is referred to in Womb by Leah Hazard (the ideal contraction strength) and Taking Flight by Lev Parikian (the ideal body weight for a bird).
- Caribbean patois and mention of an ackee tree in the short story collection If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery and the poetry collection Cane, Corn & Gully by Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa.
- The Japanese folktale “The Boy Who Drew Cats” appeared in Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, which I read last year, and then also in Enchantment by Katherine May.
- Chinese characters are mentioned to have taken part in the Tiananmen Square massacre/June 4th incident in Dear Chrysanthemums by Fiona Sze-Lorrain and Oh My Mother! by Connie Wang.
- Endometriosis comes up in What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo and Womb by Leah Hazard.
What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
These are good! Lots of Ghanaian writers at the same time there, wow.
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It’s funny how these things sometimes group together.
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Still none! But you’ve excelled yourself this month.
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One of these days you’ll come rushing over to report one 😉
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Don’t hold your breath.
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Interesting with the flood of novels on Ghana (none of which I have read!)
I had a good book/life one:
– one morning, was re-reading Mira Grant’s Into the Drowning Deep, where a character loves doing complicated embroidery on embroidery hoops, and reading Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, where a character hates doing complicated embroidery on embroidery hoops
– THEN went past a student doing complicated embroidery on an embroidery hoop – which I’ve never seen before in actual life!
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That’s fun! My mom was big into cross-stitch so that wouldn’t seem unusual to me, but it’s good to hear that students are keeping up an ancient tradition 🙂
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I think I’ve seen people cross stitching, but this was proper embroidery! Very fancy 🙂
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All I can come up with is elaborate literary cons – a lost Shakespeare play, and a set of encyclopaedias – in Arthur Phillips’s The Tragedy of Arthur and Borges’ ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’. But then so much literature is based on lies and subterfuge…
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That sounds like a good coincidence to me!
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I’ve just had three lots of gay conversion therapy almost in a row, having not encountered it in other LGBTQ books for a good while … Need to mention that in my final review of the three on Friday. I mean I also read three books published in 1940 in a row but that was intentional!
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Oh dear, an unfortunate thing to encounter. That was a major theme in one 2023 book I’ve read, Tell the Rest by Lucy Jane Bledsoe. (VG, I’d recommend.)
Right, I tend not to mention any deliberate groupings of themes so I can just focus on the coincidences.
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Always fun! Cusp of war stories are a favorite of mine–and 1939 seems to be the year. It appears in both my WIP and my backburner-ed novel manuscript. That moment where everything’s about to change is exciting, I guess.
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Do you seek out WWII stories for your pleasure reading, too?
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I’m always looking for the WWII unicorn story that captures lesser-known history or an interesting homefront perspective. All too often WWII historical aren’t literary enough for my persnickety tastes, though I sometimes give them a try. If the cover features a woman or women walking away, it’s probably not for me.
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Ha ha, I’ve shelved many a book with a cover like that at the library! I often feel burned out on WWI and WWII stories, but some can still surprise me. I’m reading In Memoriam by Alice Winn at the moment, which has a WWI setting but is mostly about homosocial and homosexual relationships among the English officers.
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I can’t think of any of my own at the moment, but I have a match with one of your book serendipity moments. Itchy mosquito bites are a problem for one character in Miracle Creek by Angie Kim as he has lost several fingers and all the feeling in his hands after a fire, so he can only rub the itch with his damaged skin rather than give it a satisfying scratch.
I’ve also realised why it’s such a good idea to have a separate post listing book serendipity, because it means that you can highlight something before you’ve finished a book; very useful if you keep books partially read for any length of time. Also, if you’re a sporadic blogger like me, there’s often no review posted to refer back to.
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That’s true, books can stick around on my piles for months, so there might be serendipity moments with other books spanning much of a year!
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I love these posts 🙂
I can only think of similarities in broad themes, which is pretty common. Rural/urban and class divides, questionable paternity – standard literary fiction stuff haha
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Thanks! I’m glad someone does.
Read too much literary fiction and you’d think every family was dysfunctional in the same ways 😉
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[…] have a Bookish Beck Book Serendipity moment here, as the action all taking place over one afternoon was reminiscent of “The Three […]
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