The author has a personal library of around four thousand books, substantial in a domestic setting, although miniscule in comparison to public libraries. The author's library has grown over fifty years. Living in Sydney now, he goes to book fairs. And he buys books that interest him. The question is, does he come across books that he already owns?
In 2023, at one book fair, he found three books, which he remembered because each was significant to him. At the next book fair he accepted it as a quest: look for books that you already own. And he found fourteen books. Some of them came from way back in the past, and he had not thought about them for years. At the following book fair there were nineteen books, across a multitude of subjects. He resigned himself to diving in to ponder what all these books meant to him now. This book is the result of that exploration.