The Joy of Serendipity

One of the reasons I fell in love with the public library as a kid was because of the joy of the serendipity of finding a great book by accident. With so many books in one place, it is fun to just pick a book at random while browsing. I have found some great reads this way, by pure accident.

So last week I was happy to see others sharing my joy of finding a book by serendipity.  Over at The Millions (an online magazine that focuses on books, art and culture) they made the following announcement:

Over the last seven-plus years, we have written about thousands of books. Knowing that people like to dig through the archives to read about the books we’ve covered, we’ve tried to create ways to make that easier, but until now our efforts had proven unwieldy to use and to manage.

So, in an effort to solve this problem once and for all, we’ve spent several months putting together a new section that we are proud to show off today: The Millions Books and Reviews.

That main page is an exercise in serendipity. Hit refresh and ten new random books will appear that have been mentioned on the site at some point in our history. Click on any one of those covers and learn more — or hit refresh again.
If you are looking for something more specific, browse by author using the alphabetical navigation at the top of the page. From those pages you’ll be able to click through to any book and view The Millions’ coverage of that book.

I have used the new index myself, and it really is fun. Each time you refresh, the book covers change. So if you have no idea what to read, why not click here and try one of the random ten books that pop up. Remember simply click on the title and a hyperlinked list of articles in which the book appeared will reveal itself.

Have fun!