Autumn has finally arrived in Sweden. I’ve been waiting for it for weeks. The cold and darkness and persistent rain. Nothing says writing like rain. Then again, it also says “what a perfect day to curl up with a good book”. Effectivity wise, it’s sort of a draw.

Autumn also says sentimentality and memories and nostalgia, and what better thing to remember than a magical May in the US and the amazing bookshops I got to visit. I think I left you after Full Circle Bookshop in Oklahoma.

Next stop was Laurel Bookshop, Oakland, a beautiful bookshop I’ve visited before and once spent days looking at while I was “working” on a café opposite the street. Laurel Bookshop has a shelf named “Justice”. I’m not sure if I need to add anything more to show you how great it is.

This was almost at the very end on my tour, and yet strangely enough I did not feel tired. It’s possible that I looked it, but I didn’t feel it. The way I remember it it was just one flight after another, transporting me to glorious bookshops and magnificent books, and if I could have, I would have continued forever. If I had been a more effective writer I could have written a book on the road and then just continued on a tour for that book, whilst writing the next, and so on, for ever and ever.

But at least I had two bookshops left. So I went to Arizona, which is apparently known for the Grand Canyon. I visited a much more important tourist attraction though, the Changing Hands bookshop – with a book bar! Called First Draft! With a logo with a typewriter and a beer. I got a t-shirt, and nowadays I use it as my writing uniform. Changing Hands have two different bookshops in quite close connection. I know this because naturally we got to the wrong one first. “My name is Katarina Bivald”, I said. “I’m here for the event?” and the poor man behind the counter looked completely blanked. Until he figured out we should have been heading for the other store. We were only ten minutes late. The store called and explained. I don’t think the woman who organized it had time to die of nervousness.

If I had a bookshop with a bar close by I would never leave. Fact.

And then, unbeliavably, we’d come to the end of the tour. We flew in through the mountains around Denver to visit the The Tattered Cover Bookstore. It’s a beautiful, winding sort of bookshop, with lots of good places to hide with a book and disappear from the real world forever. “If you can’t find me when the event starts I’ve snuck off somewhere to read”, I told Vanessa, who was my handler at the time. From the Tattered Cover Bookstore I got a personalized book mark that I naturally will never use for fear of loosing. It’s on my bookshelf now, right opposite my bed, so when I have the first cup of coffee in the morning I can look at it and be gladdened by the memory.

And now, the most important part: the pictures!