One question I am regularly asked when I am documenting book-to-book connections is, "Can't you find connections between any two books if you look hard enough, especially when they are by the same author?" My answer, so far, has been a truthful, "I don't know," because I have never gone done this type of detailed, side-by-side analysis between two books for which I had not expected connections.
However, I do now have at least preliminary evidence that I am capable of going through at least two sizable chunks of JKR/RG books without *automatically* seeing connecting elements. It helps that TB, alone among the Strike books, starts in August and runs a full year, so the timeline roughly approximates that of a Hogwarts school year. It also, like many of the Harry Potter books, marks major holidays (Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day, Easter).
Thus, I was able to do the first comparison starting in the summer and finishing with Halloween, and I found quite a few parallels.
