“Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.“

The same regular customer – yes, we are very fond of regular customers – ordered a book which he himself had discovered on this favorite new site.

Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole: A Real-Life Ronald Searle Love Story

The illustrations are beautiful and the accompanying story even more so.

Here is what Maria Popova of brainpickings.org wrote about the book:

“On New Year’s Eve 1969, Monica Searle was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. Experimental at the time, chemotherapy — the course of action Monica’s doctor recommended — was a leap of faith. After each treatment, her husband Ronald made Monica a Mrs. Mole drawing “to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead.”

The Mole idea came after the couple discovered a large cellar in the decrepit house they had just bought in the south of France. Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole gathers 47 of these jewel-like drawings, full of love and light and glowing colors. The title of the book plays off the 15th-century illuminated manuscript Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Never intended for publication, these intimate visual vignettes exude contagious optimism and hope, a kind of earnestness completely and exuberantly devoid of Searle’s signature sardonic style.

Everything about them had to be romantic and perfect. I drew them originally for no one’s eyes except Mo’s, so she would look at them propped up against her bedside lamp and think: ‘When I’m better, everything will be beautiful.’ ~ Ronald Searle

This is love.

Monica passed away last summer, some forty years after her cancer diagnosis, and Ronald Searle joined his beloved last week at the age of 91.”

Makes you wonder what goes on at Books & Company after dark. Hopefully the same as at Toronto’s Type Books !

Finally a good book for children on moving to Denmark!

The book is not only a – fictional – story about Susan and her family; each chapter includes interesting and fun facts about life in Denmark and as a an added bonus the final pages of the book include tips for parents on how to make the move to a new country, in this case Denmark, as positive an experience as possible.

Books & Company will be selling  Susan moves to Denmark at a discounted price.