A young librarian gets hired by a wealthy Japanese fashion designer to organize his library. This library takes up an entire floor of a stunning 18th arrondissement townhouse and has one peculiar characteristic: it only contains books about clouds. The setup is weird, the execution even weirder. I'm hooked.

This Finnish novel was my summer surprise. Can't really call it a risk when everyone seems to love it. It's an initiation story, absurdist, environmental, Nordic, and completely bonkers. A man hits a hare with his car and decides to abandon his entire life to care for it. That's the plot. It shouldn't work but it does.

Yesterday in Paris. Bercy Park—gorgeous, green, full of trees and water features and ducks (and pigeons). We gathered for the event we'd been planning for weeks: the book blogger picnic. Yes, we actually did this. Yes, it was exactly as awkward and wonderful as you'd imagine.

This wasn't on my reading list at all. But you know how it goes: you walk into a bookstore with a specific shopping list and a firm budget, and two minutes later you've forgotten both and you're walking out with books you've never heard of. This is one of those impulse buys. Worth every cent.

Didn't find Kurt Wallander on the Swedish roads, but I did encounter his Norwegian cousin by a fjord. Konrad Sejer, created by Karin Fossum, is the archetype of the old-fashioned cop: principled, methodical, smart without showing off. The kind of detective who makes you want to confess just to stop disappointing him.

Learning the delicate art of mosaic. Here are my first attempts, colored like Scandinavia itself. Not perfect but mine. That's all that matters when you're making something with your hands instead of just consuming it with your eyes.

Jonas is an only child. He never knew his brother Paul, who died exactly 502 days before Jonas was born. Jonas grew up with the ghost of this brother, the shadow of a boy he never met but who somehow shaped everything about his life. The title intrigued me. The execution broke my heart.

Starting with my vacation disappointments before I get to the good stuff. This Norwegian crime novel let me down despite all the hype I'd heard. Gunnar Staalesen's detective Varg Veum should work on paper. In practice? Meh. Sometimes the buzz is just noise.

Vacation's over (for now) and I'm back home, back online. Thanks to everyone who stopped by while I was gone to leave comments. Always good to come back to messages from real humans instead of just spam bots and tumbleweeds.

Not quite vacation yet (one more week to survive) but I'm putting this blog on pause because I'm completely exhausted and can't keep up anymore. Reading, writing, checking all the other blogs—it's too much. I need to step back before I burn out completely.