Book serendipity: July-December 2025

I’m following here Rebecca’s inspiration, with her awesome Book Serendipity posts.
Compiling my list of quirky incidents “when two or more books that I read at the same time or in quick succession have something in common” (Rebecca).
Serendipity, because these common elements are not planned at all!

(I do have another project, called BookBound, where I do connect books intentionally.)

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Memoirs of Hadrian:

On July 23:
For a few weeks, I’ve been reading excerpts of Mémoires d’Hadrien, by Marguerite Yourcenar (1951) with one of my French students. I want to highlight that this is entirely HIS choice, not mine.

Today, in the French nonfiction book I’m listening to, Proust, un roman familial (2023), by Laure Murat, she mentions that one of the few novels her mother loved reading and rereading was
Les Mémoires d’Hadrien!

  Haroun / Harun:

On September 17:
Mallika @ Literary Potpourri and I buddyread books, about one per month.
In August, we read
Haroun and the Sea of Stories,
by Salman Rushdie.

And in September,
we read Notes from an Island,
by Tove Jansson.
The name of Tove’s dear island was Harun!

  Frankenstein:

On November 22, I reviewed Frankenstein.

And on November 24, I started listening to 8,2 seconds,
a thriller by Maxime Chattam.
A book opens with an epigraph from Frankenstein:

“Je suis méchant parce que je suis malheureux”.
“I am malicious because I am miserable”

Gambling:

Also on November 24:
I finished reading the novella Randomize, by Andy Weir,
set around a gambling fraud.

Then I opened the book The Winter of our Discontent,
by John Steinbeck, to continue it.
I ran into Joey, described as a gambler.

  Watson:

Early December:
I was reading The Lady Vanishes,
by Ethel Lina White.
Iris try to gets Hare to help her investigate.
And the authorwrites,
“Iris felt it should have been Watson”.

The same day, I listened to
A scandal in winter, by Gillian Linscott,
one of the stories in
The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries.
This story happens to be a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and Watson is here too.

  Walking in your sleep:

December 6:
I was still reading
The Winter of our Discontent,
by John Steinbeck.
In chapter 8, Ethan hears something and thinks,
“It had to be Ellen walking in her sleep”.

Earlier in the same day,
I had listened to the short story
Serenade to a killer, by Joseph Commings
(one of the stories in
The Big Book of Christmas mysteries),
where there’s also a woman walking in her sleep.

  Ghost:

Then in next paragraph of The Winter of our Discontent,
Ethan remembers a ghost walking in his old Hawley house.

And the next short story I listened to,
The haunted crescent, by Peter Lovesey, has also a ghost!
NB: I rarely read books with ghosts!!
So two ghosts the same day is definitely serendipity for me.

Simenon:

December 8:
Reading a French thriller with one of my French student:
Mortelle canicule, by Jean-François Pasques.
A character makes a reference to Simenon.

The same day, I was also reading
Maigret et l’inspecteur malgracieux, by Georges Simenon,
with another French student!

  Nails :

December 11:
Reading at the same time A Winter Book,
by Tove Jansson
and Winter Hours, by Mary Oliver.
In the first place, it’s amazing that the same month,
I’m reading three books with the word winter
in the title.
This was not planned at all.

I read The Winter of our Discontent,
by John Steinbeck,
because it was published in 1961,
and I want to go ahead,
as I have a whole bunch of 1961 books I want to read for the 1961 club (April 13-19).
I’m reading A Winter Book, by Tove Jansson,
for our monthly buddyread with Mallika @ Literary Potpourri.

And I’m reading Winter Hours, by Mary Oliver, as part of my project
to read all of Mary Oliver’s poetry collections in chronological order.
It’s totally by chance that this one comes now.
So, in A Winter Book, by Tove Jansson, there’s a whole passage
where young Tove tries to drive nails, not successfully.
Then she sees Albert do it much better than her:

After a while I could hear Albert knocking nails into the raft. I climbed down the ladder and went over to him and watched.

“You knock nails in well,” I said.

Then he hammered even more violently so that every nail went in with five blows. I began to feel better. I sat down in the grass and watched him and counted the hammer blows out loud. One nail went in with four. Then we both laughed. (in the story entitled Albert)

And right after, I started reading Winter Hours,
by Mary Oliver.
And found more nails
at the beginning of the first part!:

I understand his pleasure. I also know the enclosure of my skills, and am no less pert than he when some flow takes me over the edge of it. Usually, as it happens, this is toward the work in which he is so capable. There appears in my mind a form; I imagine it from boards of a certain breadth and length, and nails, and all in cheerful response to some need I have or think I have, aligned with a space I see as opportunistic.

I would not pry my own tooth, or cobble my own shoes, but I deliberate unfazed the niceties of woodworking—nothing, all my life, has checked me. At my side at this moment is a small table with one leg turned in slightly. For I have never at all built anything perfectly, or even very well, in spite of the pleasure such labor gives me. Nor am I done yet, though time has brought obstacles and spread them before me—a stiffness of the fingers, a refusal of the eyes to switch easily from near to far, or rather from far to near, and thus to follow the aim of the hammer toward the nail head, which yearly grows smaller, and smaller.

I hope you enjoyed these, am planning on keeping lists and posting them
when I have enough for a post.

Discover more of my literary serendipity

DO YOU KEEP TRACK OF BOOK SERENDIPITY?
SHARE YOUR POSTS IF YOU DO
Otherwise, what did you think about the books mentioned today?