Serendipity – A Happy Accident

Here at World of Books, we receive a lot of feedback and messages, but this particular hand written letter caught our eye. It was from a lady called Linda, who ordered a New Orleans guide book from our website. Upon receiving her book she opened it to the first page, which revealed something she didn’t expect.

Let me set this up. It turns out that Linda had visited New Orleans around 5 years ago, and as the holiday was coming to a close, she gave away the guidebook she’d been using during her visit. Here we are, five years on, and Linda has decided to make a return visit to New Orleans. In preparation, she visits our website to buy another travel guide.

If you didn’t already know, here at World of Books we specialise in selling second hand books, and have done for many years. To this day we haven’t seen of anything like this…

Linda receives her order, takes a look at the book, and low and behold, the inscriptions written inside turn out to be exactly the same as the ones she added 5 years ago! It even included the handwritten message, which she stored within the pages.

So how did the book get from New Orleans to us? Well… we wish we knew! We receive such an array of titles and editions, it makes us wonder about the stories behind them, and how they all come to reach us. This is particularly relevant with our older and rarer editions, which can be found at Worldofrarebooks.com. But with our newer used books, it’s nice to hear about these little fortuitous coincidences!