Neil says hi, by the way

I’m currently reading Mark Haddon’s much acclaimed The Curious Incidence of the Dog in the Night-Time and some philosophy in the form of Schopenhauer. Talk about diametrically opposed. A couple weekends ago I finished Neil Gaiman's latest novel, Anansi Boys and found it wonderfully clever. I’ve seen other places around the net quote this one passage that stood out, so I will too:

It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were; all the rest of the people in the world, they theory suggests, are extras) and what is more, they all know each other. And it’s true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely tea shop in Vancouver…