A couple months ago, I joined Facebook to increase the market for my books. My “real” friends I already kept in touch with phone, email or letters. For FB “friends,” my tech guy, the invaluable Milo, provided a starter kit of dozens of his own, heavily weighted toward the cartoon world, where I already had a foothold, to which I added a few folks of my own.

I soon became fascinated by how FB suggested other “friends” for me. Other cartoonists poured in. I was quickly connected to people from my former workers’ compensation world. But otherwise FB worked in mysterious ways.

Through a cousin, it led me to a nephew but only weeks later, his father, my brother. While it knew all my schools and years of graduation, I have only found or been found by four members of my high school class (of 71) and no one from college (340) or law school (170)

Weirdly, out of a few thousand former clients, even before finding my brother, it offered me one who now lives in the Central Valley. Her face brought back to mind her injury and husband, whom I’d also represented. She was a nice woman and it was nice to see her, but I had not thought of her in decades and can think of nothing that connects me to her now.

The other day the first suggested “You May Also Know” was Jimmy, the disabled, homeless panhandler about whom, in 1998, I wrote “Fully Armed.” (Out of print but available from www.theboblevin.com.) How did FB know about him? Has it been reading my book?