I have just spent a glorious week visiting a friend in Oakland. Since the trip was decided quite hastily, I didn’t do any events, and besides, I am going to spend three even more glorious weeks on an epic US book tour (I’ll tell you about it tomorrow). Instead, I spent my days as God has intended us to do: having coffee and “writing” in cafés (everyone knows that when you’re abroad “working” in a café, it’s perfectly all right to just stare out of the window) and visiting every bookshop that came my way.

In fact, I ended up spending most of my days at the Bittersweet Café in Oakland. It’s best feature is that it’s just opposite Laurel Book Store, which is of course an irresistable view. Naturally I visited the bookshop several times.

It’s an amazing bookshop, and my friend told me that they used to have my book in their Recommended-bookshelf. When we met up in the evening, I told him about how much I loved the bookshop.
“What did they say when you introduced yourself?” asked my friend.
“Introduced myself?” said I.
“Yes, told them who you were.”
“But… I just bought books. I didn’t introduce myself! Of course not. I couldn’t. I had no reason to introduce myself. What would I have said? ‘Speaking about nothing, I written this book…’ – ‘You haven’t asked, of course, but I have written this book…’ – ‘It makes no difference to you, of course, but I am a writer!”
“Sometimes I forget how Swedish you are”, said my friend. And I hadn’t even told him that I also snuck around the bookshop looking for my book. Of course I did. Surely every author do?
“So did you talk to them at all?”
“Well, sure. I complimented their bookshop and talked about the weather.”
Sometimes it’s quite a struggle being Swedish.

But the good news is that it turned out that I will be visiting them on May 21 for an event during my epic tour, so I’ll get to visit them again. And I bought some great books there, of course.