Recently, I ordered a book (this book) from the greatest innovation for readers since the free public library, Paperback Swap. This is all well and good, but I had thought, in my silly, addled way, that I had been ordering this book, which I have been seeking out for some time to refurbish the RPG collection of my childhood, lost to my mother’s insane bout of religious intolerance, now mostly abated (she hasn’t handled a snake in years). This is where the mystery begins…
I received the first book, that I had ordered, on the Tuesday preceding today, immediately after Labor Day (“workers of the world unite!”). But I also received, through a secondary retailer of amazon.com, the second book, the book that I had THOUGHT I was ordering, at the same time. Both books were in my post-box, like little presents from a winged angel with marbled wings. I have determined that neither I nor my life partner, in a fit of absent-minded book purchasing (not actually that unlikely), had purchased the book, and I am left thinking that the universe, through the auspices of L-space, have seen fit to give me a present. Of course, one of my friends, few though they may be in number, may have been thinking of randomly bestowing upon me a gift of a book, but why that book? Why then? I stand before the stacks of the universe in awe, still impressed that I show up in its card catalogue.
Mouldering Earths and Book-Dust 