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. People frequently ask how I remember all of these coincidences. The answer is: I jot them down on scraps of paper or input them immediately into a file on my PC desktop; otherwise, they would flit away!
The following are in roughly chronological order.
- Raising a wild animal but (mostly) calling it by its species rather than by a pet name (so “Pigeon” and “the leveret/hare”) in We Should All Be Birds by Brian Buckbee and Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton.
- Eating hash cookies in New York City in Women by Chloe Caldwell and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- A woman worries she’s left underclothes strewn about a room she’s about to show someone in one story of Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny and Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
The dialogue is italicized in Women by Chloe Caldwell and Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
- The ‘you know it when you see it’ definition (originally for pornography) is cited in Moderation by Elaine Castillo and Bookish by Lucy Mangan.
- Women (including the protagonist) weightlifting in a gym in Moderation by Elaine Castillo and All Fours by Miranda July.
- Miranda July, whose All Fours I was also reading at the time, was mentioned in Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You by Candice Chung.
- A sibling story and a mystical light: late last year into early 2025 I read The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham, and then I recognized this type of moment in Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
- A lesbian couple with a furniture store in Carol [The Price of Salt] by Patricia Highsmith and one story of Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund.
- Not being able to see the stars in Las Vegas because of light pollution was mentioned in The Wild Dark by Craig Childs, then in Moderation by Elaine Castillo.
- A gynaecology appointment scene in All Fours by Miranda July and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- An awkwardly tall woman in Heartwood by Amity Gaige, How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney, and Stoner by John Williams.
- The 9/11 memorial lights’ disastrous effect on birds is mentioned in The Wild Dark by Craig Childs and How to Be Somebody Else by Miranda Pountney.
- A car accident precipitated by an encounter with wildlife is key to the denouement in the novellas Women by Chloe Caldwell and Wild Boar by Hannah Lutz.
- The plot is set in motion by the death of an older brother by drowning, and pork chops are served to an unexpected dinner guest, in Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven and Days of Light by Megan Hunter, both of which I was reading for Shelf Awareness review.
- Kids running around basically feral in a 1970s summer, and driving a box of human ashes around in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven.
- A character becomes a nun in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and Days of Light by Megan Hunter.
- Wrens nesting just outside one’s front door in Lifelines by Julian Hoffman and Little Mercy by Robin Walter.
- ‘The female Woody Allen’ is the name given to a character in Women by Chloe Caldwell and then a description (in a blurb) of French author Nolwenn Le Blevennec.
- A children’s birthday party scene in Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny and Friends and Lovers by Nolwenn Le Blevennec. A children’s party is also mentioned in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and A Family Matter by Claire Lynch.
- A man who changes his child’s nappies, unlike his father – evidence of different notions of masculinity in different generations, in Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, What My Father and I Don’t Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate, and one piece in Beyond Touch Sites, edited by Wendy McGrath.
- What’s in a name? Repeated names I came across included Pansy (Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and Days of Light by Megan Hunter), Olivia (Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and A Family Matter by Claire Lynch), Jackson (Case Histories by Kate Atkinson and So Far Gone by Jess Walter), and Elias (Good Girl by Aria Aber and Dream State by Eric Puchner).
- The old wives’ tale that you should run in zigzags to avoid an alligator appeared in Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez and then in The Girls Who Grow Big by Leila Mottley, both initially set in Florida.
- A teenage girl is groped in a nightclub in Good Girl by Aria Aber and Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann.
- Discussion of the extinction of human and animal cultures and languages in both Nature’s Genius by David Farrier and Lifelines by Julian Hoffman, two May 2025 releases I was reading at the same time.
- In Body: My Life in Parts by Nina B. Lichtenstein, she mentions Linn Ullmann – who lived on her street in Oslo and went to the same school (not favourably – the latter ‘stole’ her best friend!); at the same time, I was reading Linn Ullmann’s Girl, 1983! And then, in both books, the narrator recalls getting a severe sunburn.
On the same day, I read about otter sightings in Lifelines by Julian Hoffman and Spring by Michael Morpurgo. The next day, I read about nesting swallows in both books.
- The Salish people (Indigenous to North America) are mentioned in Lifelines by Julian Hoffman, Dream State by Eric Puchner (where Salish, the town in Montana, is also a setting), and So Far Gone by Jess Walter.
- Driving into a compound of extremists, and then the car being driven away by someone who’s not the owner, in Dream State by Eric Puchner and So Far Gone by Jess Walter.
- A woman worries about her (neurodivergent) husband saying weird things at a party in The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier and Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal by Robin Ince.
- Shooting raccoons in Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson and So Far Gone by Jess Walter. (Raccoons also feature in Dream State by Eric Puchner.)
- A graphic novelist has Hollywood types adding (or at least threatening to add) wholly unsuitable supernatural elements to their plots in Spent by Alison Bechdel and Ginseng Roots by Craig Thompson.
- A novel in which a character named Dawn has to give up her daughter in the early 1980s, one right after the other: A Family Matter by Claire Lynch, followed by Love Forms by Claire Adam.
- A girl barricades her bedroom door for fear of her older brother in Love Forms by Claire Adam and Sleep by Honor Jones.
- A scene of an only child learning that her mother had a hysterectomy and so couldn’t have any more children in Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Other People’s Mothers by Julie Marie Wade.
- An African hotel cleaner features in Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Hotel by Daisy Johnson.
- Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels” is mentioned in Nature’s Genius by David Farrier and The Dry Season by Melissa Febos.
- A woman assembles an inventory of her former lovers in Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Dry Season by Melissa Febos.
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 
As ever, I’m just dumbfounded …
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Love all of these, and so many from Days of Light! (Though the winner has to be the shared names – three from Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories alone! Wow.)
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The not seeing stars in Vegas, furniture store, and female Woody are bizarre! I had a really strange, specific one recently but can’t for the life of me remember what it was – I need to start jotting them down.
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Always so impressive. Your post reminds me I have to schedule my first one, I have enough data now!
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I love these so much! I was thinking of you yesterday as I read a scene in a book about a woman in a restaurant watching a group of people speaking in sign language at a neighbouring table and then we went to a restaurant last night and there was a group of people speaking in sign language at a neighbouring table!
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Book/life serendipity — I love it!
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Rebecca, I just posted my first one: https://wordsandpeace.com/2025/06/24/book-serendipity-february-june-2025/
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Fantastic! Thanks so much for joining in. Did you make or find that featured image? I’ve toyed with making one of my own to accompany these posts, but never had a brilliant idea.
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Actually I made it with AI. I should have said, so I just added the info. I forgot which AI I used at the time though
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‘A lesbian couple with a furniture store’ hahaha classic. You know about one of mine, but I managed to remember another this month: the very rare Capgras Syndrome is the subject of Richard Powers’s The Echo Maker but is also mentioned in Basilisk by Matt Wixey, which I was reading at the same time.
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Wow… that is one amazing list!
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The double sightings of otters and then nesting swallows in that pair, I like that.
And the raccoons, elsewhere, but, wait, do I need to be worried about them in the new Jess Walter? I just picked up my copy on the weekend…
And the pork chop one made me think that it would be fun to collect an entire menu, from among all your synchronities posts, to see what everyone was eating while you’ve been collecting these notes. You could “serve it” at whatever social event was next a synchronicity (in this instance, it would be served at a children’s birthday party). I know, I should get out of my head: it’s busy in here. heheh
As for mine, I only had two this time. First, in the same evening I was reading a biography of Cdn feminist writer Nellie McClung and noting the books/authors she read when she was young: one was Ivanhoe. Later that night, in James (Percival Everett) one of the riverboats was called the Walter Scott.
Next, the visit of the Royals from England to Canada in the summer of 1939 is a major plot point in Nina Berkhout’s This Bright Dust and, then, it showed up in a short story in Timothy Findley’s Stones which I’ve been reading all year, but that story came up only recently.
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I really enjoyed the Walter — my first by him, but certainly not my last. The raccoons are used to comic effect. One does get shot with a BB gun, but I can’t now recall if we learn its fate.
Excellent connections to notice.
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Ha – I love the very specific drowning and pork chops one! As usual I’ve been linking to your most recent post when I’ve found one.
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[…] a moment of Bookish Beck Serendipity, Julian and Sandy from Round the Horne feature briefly, speaking Polari, something I just read a […]
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I have two for you this time: I was recently reading two books at the same time with “Boom” in the title – “Boom Road” and “The Great Boomsky.” And I read two books in a row in which someone tripped on the arm of a person lying on the ground who was either dead or close to dead.
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Those are awesome! Though tripping over a dead arm is pretty creepy…
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