Parallel reading is a term I’ve just come up with that I’m certain must exist somewhere else, too. It’s when you read books, articles, etc. on a common theme at the same time. Classes are often built around this; I’ve created library displays about this. If you liked Harry Potter, you should read The Magicians or “Think about Rome” by reading The Hunger Games and The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or “Want to Know more about Evolution?, Read Your Inner Fish.” As a librarian, this is pretty common fair.
However, accidental parallel reading is when you pick up a couple of books that you don’t think have anything in common, and it’s as if they were written to be read together. I have no idea how often this happens, because I’ve only just stopped to think about it enough to write about it. I’m reading two books right now, one fiction and one nonfiction. This is pretty common for me. However, the books rarely have anything to do with each other. But right now, the books have such a common theme, it’s kind of eerie. I’m reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a book that was recommended by a coworker years ago that I’ve finally gotten around to, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, a book that NPR can’t get enough of. These are both books focusing on introverts, observers, thinkers. Elegance isn’t cataloged as “Introverts–Fiction” (it’s cataloged as “Apartment concierges–France–Paris–Fiction” because the Library of Congress is strange) and this wasn’t recommended by an introvert. But the two main characters are introvert geniuses observing, commenting upon, and snarking about the normal, bombastic world around them. They are the real-life (well, real-fiction-life) examples of the general characteristics extolled in Quiet. I couldn’t have planned the pairing better if I tried.
And that feels weird.
So, has this happened to you?
The BiblioFiles 