Reading Synchronicities

I had a great time reading for a whole day for Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon, even if I didn't quite make it to 24 hours. Having set aside all that time specifically for reading, I felt no guilt, or any urge to do anything else at all. Fortunately, I had more time off as it is a holiday weekend here, so was able to recover nicely and still get some holiday time in -- even some cooking, too.

But something I noticed, reading all sorts of different books all at once, was the odd synchronicity among the texts. I had a stack of about 22 different books, all sorts, selected rather randomly. Some were my own, some belong to the library. Yet, as I read, connections were being made...

I spent a lot of the day reading short stories by Ray Bradbury. I like his work, and one or two short stories between other books was a good way to stay inspired. After one session of Bradbury, I picked up a nonfiction book about the power of intuition, opened it and at the top of the chapter was a quote by Bradbury. This was not a writing book, and so it was completely unexpected, though delightful.

I began reading William Boyd's Blue Afternoon, then switched over to Penelope Lively's City of the Mind -- both were about architects, opening with the main character at a building site they were responsible for. Reading along in Boyd, I noticed a mention of Enfield (England) which some of my relatives have connections to. I was just thinking how funny it is to see discussion of a place one lives in a book, and how this rarely happens to me since I am from Saskatchewan, not a hot spot in international fiction. Then I picked up Jonathan Coe's The Rain Before It Falls, which I was halfway through, and within two pages one of the major characters abruptly leaves England and moves to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

All these odd little connections made my reading even more entertaining than usual. Do you notice such things when you're reading? Are there any unexpected synchronicities you have discovered in your reading lately?