A phenomenon

I have been struck by an interesting phenomenon after discovering the book Confederacy of Dunces. After hearing about this book, I began to find references to it. And not just the occasional obscure reference; I find references everywhere. Presumably I must have come across countless references before my discovery of it. However, none of them made any impact on me ­— I simply don't remember ­­ever having come across a book called Confederacy of Dunces. Clearly I was completely overlooking those earlier references; they were disappearing in some sort of blind spot of ignorance. Alternatively, the book only started to appear in my phenomenological world after I became aware of it.

Looking in the local bookstore for novels by contemporary Russian authors, I bought a book The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov — another book I had never heard of. The very next day I took Bucky to Patriarch's Pond for a run around. Reading up about Patriarch's Pond in my Lonely Planet I read "This peaceful fish pond was immortalised by writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who had the devil appear here in The Master and Margarita..."