Coincidences and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

I read so many books, I easily lose track of how I came to possess them.

Friends, articles, references in other books.  I devour these recommendations and always have a stack by my bed, usually overweighted with non-fiction and increasingly related to consciousness, purpose, and various mysteries of life.

I get a lot of books from my local public library. I love libraries. There's a meme circulating around about them being one of the few remaining places in our capitalistic society where you're permitted to exist without expectation the expectation to spend money. I love walking into the library and walking out with almost too much to carry. It's incredibly freeing.

I've had a lifelong habit of reading about five books at once. Recently, as I've been delving deeper into the unknown, it seems like several books can meld into a single volume. My friend made the comment that books talk to each other. My cousin suggested that in certain cases, there is only one author -- even with decades and decades separating their publication dates and different names on their covers. 

I think books find me. I think they're put into my hands on purpose. I found myself reading a book by an author I had never heard of and a title I didn't recall. I swear I must have accidentally checked it out from the library, picking up Mrs. Jordan's or Mr. Johnston's selection from the holds shelf instead of my own.

And the whole book -- it was like I needed to read it. It glowed when I opened it, like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

Does this happen because of coincidence? Is it my subconscious or unconscious mind selecting them while I remain unaware, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy? How does it know what's in them? Is it a collective consciousness thing?  A higher power at work? 

When I was in college, I was home on Summer break, writing a screenplay in the bedroom I grew up in. In one scene, I crafted Neil Diamond's Hello Again into the soundtrack. At exactly the same time as I was typing out the song title, my dad walked into the living room on the other side of the house and put the LP on the stereo.  It sent chills through me.

That can't be chance. Can it? It's beyond statistical probability. Something more has to be at work here, no?