One of the joys of going to Sweden is to browse through my own book collection and bring back one or two of my favorites, and to pick up new Swedish books in the book stores. And so I did also this summer. However, since Delta was complaining about my 1.5 lb overweight on the New York – Stockholm flight (and no, we did not intentionally fly Delta, we were just sloppy when we booked the tickets and didn’t check KLM’s partner arrangements), I didn’t want to take any risks on the way back., so I ended up leaving all my books behind. (Air France proved to be more flexible though and didn’t say anything about my 1 kg overweight.) Hence, the earlier promised book review of Richard Yate’s Young Hearts Crying will have to wait. I got so down from reading it that I had to put it away for a while, and now I won’t be able to finish it until next time I’m in Sweden. (Here is the New York Times’ 1984 review instead.) However, with all the books that I had to leave behind, I thought I deserved a visit to Kramerbooks & Afterwords. And as the bookaholic I am, I came out with four new books for the fall. Following this summer’s theme of figuring out life’s essentials, I ended up with Sofie’s World (Jostein Gaarder), The Happiness Project (Gretchen Ruben), The Value of Nothing (Raj Patel), and the Power of Kindness (Piero Ferrucci). Hopefully, I will have acquired some much-needed wisdom in a month or so!