The Bookish Life of Kim Golden
Who are you, how do you know Claire and why does she think you’re cool?
My name is Kim Golden and I’m an American author who calls southern Sweden her home these days. I write romantic women’s fiction which is often set in Scandinavia and features Black women as the heroines. If you want to dive into my books, check out Near Enough to Hold (my most recent release) and Maybe Baby.
I met Claire when we were both still living in Sweden and I stumbled upon her blog, Life is Swede, and I was hooked! We’ve been following each other since then. So why does Claire think I am cool? Maybe because we both have experienced the wackiness of being expats in Sweden, I have no filter and I can probably help you win a pub quiz with all the random stuff I know about music, Italy, books and my weird obsession with Tsarist Russia and the Habsburg empire.
What was the first book you remember? (Either reading or being read to you)
My mother and my kindergarten teacher swore that I taught myself to read thanks to my love of The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. I remember being completely obsessed with that book and I never wanted anyone else in my kindergarten class to read it. I still love that story.
What are you reading right now?
I just finished rereading The Siren of Sussex by Mimi Matthews. It’s an IR/MC historical romance set during the Victorian era, just after the death of Prince Albert and everyone’s a little obsessed with spiritualists. It features a forbidden love story between a young Englishwoman who needs to marry well to help her sisters and the Indian-English dressmaker who is supposed to help her snare the attention of suitors with her eye-catching riding habits and dresses…but they end up falling in love at a time when mixed marriages were frowned upon. And, in today’s social and political climate, they still are.
Plan a dinner party with six fictional guests
Yuri Zhivago from Doctor Zhivago, Lestat from Interview with the Vampire and the Vampire Lestat, Sethe from Beloved by Toni Morrison, Nova from Goodnight, Beautiful, Mads from Maybe Baby and Claudia from Monday’s Not Coming.
If you had to live in the world of one book (or series), which would it be?
Then it would be in my own series, the Maybe… series, which is mostly set in Copenhagen. I would especially love to always be in the endless summer days at Snekkersten, where Henrik from Maybe Tomorrow has his summer house and where his and Eddy’s romance begins on Sankt Hans Aften (Danish Midsummer).
You can read/reread three books for the rest of your life. What’s going on the list?
Wow! Okay, this is one of those questions I always find difficult because it depends on my mood. As of today, these are the three books I could reread for the rest of my life:
From Scratch by Tembi Locke
In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner
His Insignificant Other by Karen Siplin