"A book is a gift you can open again and again." (Garrison Keillor)

 Who can be without books? Not me. And no kindle or some such books, please. They have to be proper, 'old-fashioned' books. I never get tired of them. The only problem is where to put them all... especially now that we have some new ones stacking up.

My mother-in-law has moved to a care-home, and therefore doesn't have the space for them all anymore. What a gift it was for us, to be offered the chance to go through her bookshelves and choose what we wanted! The above are some of the books I picked. My mother-in-law is especially interested in Finnish and Swedish history, memoirs, art, architecture. How true it is, that looking at the books a person has will tell you who they really are.

I was pleasantly surprised to find, among her books, one by Merete Mazzarella, in Swedish called Där man aldrig är ensam or Where you are never alone. A book is always company, sometimes even the best company. Merete Mazzarella is a professor of literature, and my daughter attended her classes at university. She - Mazzarella - has written about some very interesting and often controversial subjects. Her latest book (which I haven't read but hope to) is about falling head-over-heels in love in your senior years, while already married to a husband who is over 80 years old. This happened in her own life. 

I can't wait to start reading and browsing these new books. But before that I should finish reading my current book, Nothing to envy, by Barbara Demick. It describes unbelievable facts about ordinary people's lives in North Korea. The title says it all.