Serendipity

It’s a good idea to start buying -- but not necessarily reading -- your travel books long before you actually begin your trip. That way you have plenty of time to search for just the right books and, when you do get around to reading them, you’ll have time to go back to the store on the off chance one of them turns out not to be any good.

Don’t buy them too early, however, because at least one of them will get misplaced and when you’re ready to start using it you’ll have to spend 2 hours and 20 minutes looking for it on every bookshelf, dresser, computer table, fireplace hearth, and other flat surface in the house before you find it lying in plain sight in the middle of the coffee table.

No, finding it there is not serendipitous. It’s an(other) indicator that you’re fast approaching the point at which you will need round-the-clock supervision.

While searching every bookshelf, dresser, computer table, fireplace hearth, and other flat surface in the house, however, you might run across a book you read a dozen years ago -- say, The Wife of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis. And, remembering that you liked it a lot, you might pick it up, look at the blurbs on the back cover, and say to yourself “Well, I might not know where that goddamn London guidebook is, but I think I just figured out what book to take on the plane.”

Those blurbs, for five different books -- from publications like Saturday Review, New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, and the Christian Science Monitor:

• “An exceptional achievement”
• “One of the most significant short novels in English”
• “. . . the perfect novel of its genre”
• “A long, detailed novel of very high quality, and at the same time a magnificent picture . . . “
• “One marvels at the transparency of her art.”

And finding a book like The Wife of Martin Guerre while looking for your missing guidebook is serendipitous.