January 1, 2015, Thursday evening -- Reading Dan Buthler & Day Öhrlund

On New Year's Day at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia

She just flew in from Sweden to visit family (via Austria to visit more family and Dubai where her flight connected), and is trying to stay awake until bedtime.  It's  hours from Austria to Dubai and then another 14 to Australia.  The bright sunlight, she said, helps.  Just a day ago she was skiing with ice stuck to her eyelashes.

She is reading Erövraren, by Dan Buthler & Day Öhrlund.  The title means "conqueror."  I didn't ask what it's about, but it's a crime novel. I told her about how I was in Sweden earlier this year, er, um, I mean last year, and read a crime novel in which the police were constantly going to coffee shops for coffee and cinnamon/cardamom buns and how, when you're reading you really want one, and then you, as the reader go yourself.  She nodded in agreement. 

She also likes to read the British authors Ken Follett and Frederick Forsyth, translated into Swedish, as well as Swedish novelists, including Lars Kepler (who is the pen name for not just one, but two Swedish authors -- Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril -- who are married.

She asked me if I had seen a show called The Bridge, a crime drama, which was written by Hans Rosenfeldt, about finding a body on a bridge between Sweden and Denmark.  The story was then adapted for the U.S. to take place across the border of Mexico and California.