I have to apologize. I asserted a week or so ago that I had an uncanny knack for choosing my reading and finding that the books had an unexpected relationship to each other. The next two books I read have proved my statement a lie. At least this time.

I read The Uncoupling after reading several positive reviews. Author Meg Wolitzer afflicts the women of her book with a sudden lack of desire. The sexual aspect of their being disappears and wreaks havoc on the town. The book was light, funny. I expected something deeper, frankly. Wolitzer touches on the reasons why each woman is affected by the spell — a new mother feeling her body is no longer her own or a long-time wife wondering if her sexual relationship with her husband is just another kind of rut. And the fact that it’s an other-worldly curse that causes the sex strike seemed contrived.

The next book I picked up was What is Left The Daughter by Howard Norman. The language is as spare as the Maritime Canada landscape in which it takes place. Written as a letter by a father to his daughter, it moves from tragedy through war, to tragedy and then on to some unknown future that will probably be less bleak. I liked the book enough to seek out other works by Norman that I look forward to reading.

But where is the link between them? I have been up at night trying to come up with one. I could reach really hard and say that both books have as a central figure a daughter who, although central, appears little in the pages of the books. But really, is that a link?

So maybe I don’t have some weird supernatural ability to choose books that relate to each other in some way. Then again, the next batch seems promising. I started with Bucolic Plague, moved on to Tina Fey’s Bossypants and am now reading Jennimae and James. All three are memoirs; two involve humorous looks at how determined people achieved their dreams. I think figuring out how the last book fits with the first two will be another stretch. But give me a week of late nights and I’ll come up with something that my old English teachers would give a strong C+. Maybe even a B-.