One thing that I really love is to read to someone or listen when someone else reads to me. I’m lucky because I have so many younger sisters and brothers that half of my life I have been able (and forced) to read to someone. I remember when I read Tove Jansson’s  “Moominland midwinter” (“Trollvinter” / “Taikatalvi”) to my little brother and there was this moment where the little squirrel dies (and Little My wants to make gloves of him) and Tove has wrote to the book a little note that goes something like this: “If reader now starts to cry like a crazy he should look to the page…” and when you look that other page you will find out that at the end of the book this little squirrel lives again! My brother was very serious when I read to him how this squirrel died but after that little note he started to laugh and was very proud when he said: “I didn’t cry at all!”

Last May I read James Krüss “Timm Taler oder Das Verkaufte Lachen” ("Timm Taler eli myyty nauru”) to my other brother when I was in Spain with him. First he swimed all day like some small cute dolphin and after that every night I read to him this very exciting and a little bit scary children’s book. I knew he could have read it by himself but I demanded that I have to read it to him. And it was so nice. Maybe the best memory from that trip. Those warm dark nights and me, my brother and my sister reading together this great story. Very cosy so far away from home.

I also remember how I read Paul Auster’s “New York Trilogy” aloud couple of years ago in Panama. I was there with someone who this time wasn’t my brother and we were visiting this very small island where there was nothing to do except to walk 500 metres to the left or 300 metres to the right. After walking like that for a while we gave up and rest of the day we lied at dock in hammocks and read Auster to each others. It was so nice especially because we read it in Finnish. After spending so much time around Spanish it was very nice to hear some Finnish even when it was my own voice. Well, all that sun and sea around me wasn’t bad either. Maybe Auster should be read only in nice warm environment, who knows.

So I love to read aloud to people but somehow I still hope that people would read to me more often. When I was child my mother read me a lot. Actually she read to me every night before I went to sleep for years. I remember how she read “The Lord of the Rings” to me and my brother and every now and then we had to wake her up because she fell in sleep. We didn’t, even when that was her intention. Anyway, I’m very good at listening. Apart from those times of course, when I so much enjoy the readers voice that I forget it listen the story… That happens too.