#Microblog Monday 196: Surprise
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We ran to the beach this weekend to celebrate my birthday early, so I grabbed a new book to read on the sand. I picked up the book — The Last Policeman — because the cover looked interesting and immediately got sucked into the writing style and plotline. It’s a trilogy, which made it even more appealing — there were two more books after this one that I knew would be enjoyable, too.
I started reading and realized that it was set in New England. I used to live in New England, so I flipped to the acknowledgements page to see if we knew anyone in common. I saw that he thanked an old friend from high school — someone I knew from Maryland, not Massachusetts. Then I flipped to the front of the book and saw that he had dedicated it to the same friend. Some quick Googling and I discovered that the author was my old friend’s brother!
So one book not only provided me with hours of entertainment at the beach, but it connected me to my old friend via Facebook. See; books really do bring people together.
Have you ever made a connection to another person over a book?
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9 comments
Wow, what a fantastic coincidence! Alas, no such great connections that I can recall, although I did cement a good relationship with one coworker when she happened to say “Mordred’s a hungry” as she walked past my office and I responded “Beware the Gunslinger.” Nothing like hearing the call of the nerd in the wild!
So cool that this happened with the latest book you’re reading!
that is so cool. what a connection!
Not sure this quite qualifies, but the one that came to mind is Tara Westover’s recent memoir, “Educated” (which is an excellent read). She comes from southern Idaho & mentioned the name of a town near where she grew up — which happens to be where a distant cousin (one I made contact with through genealogy research) lives. I was curious, so I went to to this cousin’s FB page and friends list. Tara uses pseudonyms for her (estranged) parents’ first names in the book, but sure enough, there was a Westover on my cousin’s friends list and it’s Tara’s mother. Interesting.
Wow, that’s a great story! It really is a small world.
That is so cool! I love reading the acknowledgements and seeing how interconnected the writing/publishing world is. It’s fun for me to discover which of my favorite authors are friends with other favorite authors. I guess the most recent thing was reading “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson and finding that she wrote about Chillicothe, OH where my family’s from AND Hocking Hills, which was a state park where my grandfather was a forest ranger. SMALL WORLD.
That. Is. Awesome! Seriously, how cool is that connection! Especially paired with an awesome book trilogy.
Ok I think I have a good one for you except it didn’t really happen to me.
Many years back, my partner was doing research as part of a post- doc and met a very interesting participant for the research study. He got talking away to this lovely man and part of their conversation was about architecture and the psychology behind it. In this discussion, which was clearly quite impactful on my partner, he recalled this man discussing a particular book about “The psychological impact of city skylines” . This is the very sort of thing my partner finds very interesting.
Not too long after this encounter, it happened that this same man became quite “Famous” , in a sad way, because his son, who was a journalist who was reporting on the Arab spring uprisings and had become imprisoned by Egyptian authorities. This man was then in the news quite regularly, requesting release of his son.
So… then… Staying in a little airbnb place once, we were flipping through this interesting book about “the architecture of city skylines” and my partner was flipping out about how someone was telling him about this very book — then… he looked in the front cover and saw the name stamp of this guy, his research participant, in the front cover– it was HIS book, the very one he had talked about during that conversation.
Never made a connection over a book that I can remember but my sister and kids and I always comment how we can pick up a book at random and find out it happens to take place in the same season, or sometimes even the same week or day, we’re reading it or they keep mentioning one of our birthdays. Since I did stand-up comedy for a lot of years, I once was in a B & N near the “for dummies” books and wondered if I knew the person who wrote the stand-up comedy one and it was an old good friend of mine.