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.

• I encountered quotes from “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats on the same day in Immanuel by Matthew McNaught and Waiting for the Monsoon by Rod Nordland. A week or so later, I found another allusion to it – a “rough _________ slouching toward ________” – in Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• Reading my second memoir this year in which the author’s mother bathed them until they were age 17 (in other words, way past when it ceased to be appropriate): I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy was followed by Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• Quoting a poem with the word “riven” in it (by Christian Wiman) in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and (by a character in the novel) in Bright and Tender Dark by Joanna Pearson. The word “riven” (which is really not a very common one, is it?) also showed up in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs. And then “riving” in one of the poems in The Intimacy of Spoons by Jim Minick.

• East Timor as a destination in Waiting for the Monsoon by Rod Nordland and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• Quoting John Donne in Places I’ve Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (to which a Donne line is the epigraph); mimicking Donne in one poem of Fields Away by Sarah Wardle.

• “Who do you think you are?” as a question an abusive adult asks of a child in The Beggar Maid (aka Who Do You Think You Are?) by Alice Munro and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• Sylvia Plath is mentioned in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray … and Katherine Mansfield in Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and The Beggar Maid by Alice Munro.

• Mosquitoes are mentioned in a poem in Rapture’s Road by Seán Hewitt and Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest.

• Reading two memoirs that quote a Rumi poem (and that released on 9 April and that I reviewed for Shelf Awareness): Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller and Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott. (Rumi was also quoted as an epigraph in Viv Fogel’s poetry collection Imperfect Beginnings.)

• Bereavement memoirs that seek significance in eagle sightings (i.e. as visitations from the dead): Sleepless by Annabel Abbs and Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller.

• Snyder’s pretzels as a snack in Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott and Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.

• Reading two C-PTSD memoirs at the same time: A Flat Place by Noreen Masud and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• Information about coral reefs dying in Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• The gay slang term “twink” appears in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• Assisting a mother who reads tarot cards in Intervals by Marianne Brooker and The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett. (Tarot is also read in First Love by Lilly Dancyger and The Future by Catherine Leroux.)

• An Asian American character who plays poker in a graphic novel: Advocate by Eddie Ahn and Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang.

• Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments, which I was also reading at the time, is mentioned in Intervals by Marianne Brooker.

• An Uncle Frank in an Irish novel with no speech marks: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

• Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is quoted in Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me by Kate Clanchy and How to Raise a Viking by Helen Russell.

• Using quarters for laundry in Come and Get It by Kiley Reid and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.

• A scene of someone watching from a lawn chair as someone else splits wood in Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar and Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray.

• Quotes from cultural theorist Sara Ahmed in Intervals by Marianne Brooker and A Flat Place by Noreen Masud.

• I read about windows being blocked up because of high taxes on the same evening in Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.

• I saw Quink ink mentioned in The Silence by Gillian Clarke and Trespasses by Louise Kennedy on the same evening.

• The song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” is mentioned in You’re on Your Own, Snoopy by Charles M. Schulz and Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal.

• A pet magpie in George by Frieda Hughes and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.

• A character tests to see what will happen (will God strike them down?) when they mess with the Host (by stealing the ciborium or dropping a wafer on the floor, respectively) in A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power and one story from Dressing Up for the Carnival by Carol Shields.

• Marrying the ‘wrong’ brother in The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.

• Indigenous author, Native versus Catholic religion, and descriptions of abuse and cultural suppression at residential schools in Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray and A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power.

• Teen girls obsessed with ‘sad girl’ poetry, especially by Sylvia Plath, in First Love by Lilly Dancyger and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

• “Hyacinth” is a poem in Solutions for the Problem of Bodies in Space by Catherine Barnett, and “Hyacinth Girl” a story in Cocktail by Lisa Alward. (Hyacinths are also mentioned in a poem in The Iron Bridge by Rebecca Hurst.)

• A character named Sissy in A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power and Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.

• Harming amphibians, whether deliberately or accidentally, in a story in Barcelona by Mary Costello, a poem in Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore, and Mothership by Greg Wrenn.

• A significant character called Paul in Dances by Nicole Cuffy, Daughter by Claudia Dey (those two were both longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize), and Moral Injuries by Christie Watson.

• Out of Africa (the film and then the book), which I was looking through for the #1937Club, is mentioned in The Whole Staggering Mystery by Sylvia Brownrigg – her writer grandfather lived in Nairobi’s “Happy Valley” in the 1930s.

• Reading two novels at the same time in which a teen girl’s plans to study medicine are derailed by war: Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan and The Snow Hare by Paula Lichtarowicz.

What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?