Why Kirja & Kaffe?
For a very long time one of my big lofty dreams has been to have a bookshop and a café. How original I know. I could envision the interiors, the customers, the young girls wearing hijabs being in charge of the café and coming up with event ideas, while all kinds of customers would be taking part in book circles, buying books, having lunch and loving the pottery from which they would drink their coffee so much that they would end up buying their mug. All the while I would be the fairy goodmother of it all.
This substack is my way of creating something even if it is not even remotely anything like this lofty dream. I knew the name of my bookshop & coffe chain (of course it would be a chain) the minute I saw the perfect place for it. Kirja & Kaffe.
“Kirja” means book in Finnish and “Kaffe” is Swedish for coffee. And since I am a Swedish-Speaking Finn, I thought that was quite clever. Do I love coffee? Not so much, I´m a tea drinker. Do I love books then? Yes, I do. Indeed I do.
So this is my way of flirting with unrealistic ideas, creativity and seeing where it takes me.
No book in sight, no tea either. But this picture taken pre-pandemic times by my bestie Maria is one of my favourite professionally taken pictures.
What will you recieve by subscribing?
At first I was unrealistic not only about my dreams, but how often and when I would write my substack articles and send out the newsletter. Tuesday night seemed like a good idea. Every Tuesday. It worked well until it didn´t so I will not promise you a very regular newsletter. But I will do my best to be funny, witty, a bit edgy and write about things I am interested in and that I hope you are too:
Dreams, and how they do or do not turn out
Personal development stuff and a slightly critical take on it
Musings on life (I know musings might give some of you allergic reactions but bear with me)
Occasional whining about having gained a lot of extra weight
Personal musings (ok here it is again) and experiences drawn from my life of being a 59 year old, sorry young woman who is a widow and now lives with her cat while her adult daughter has moved away from home several years ago.
Writing and creativity, things like moodboards
Now you might wonder, if this is a Substack called Books & Coffee, are you really not going to talk about books at all? Do you even read books? Yes, I do read books but I don´t think I will write about them. But I might write about writing a book…
Here is a post where I write about books… and book shelves… and dreams in case you don´t believe me when I say I do love books.
I have a Master´s in political science and things like social justice, global issues and all things political is important to me and part of who I am. Despite this politics is not anything I will write about other than in very subtle terms. Hope that´s fine for you.
There are excellent academics and journalists´s at Substack that are much more highly skilled than me and I follow them to gain knowledge instead of making a fool of myself by trying to be smart.
