Tonight I am sharing the books that I acquired while on my trip to Germany.

As always I seem to bring back books when I travel.

I picked up 1492: The Year Our World Began by Felipe Fernádez-Armesto at the airport while waiting for my flight home.

I had a small bag of coins and needed to use them, so of course I decided to buy a book. This one caught my eye with the title and the old maps on the cover. I read the first four chapters of the book during the trip home and am looking forward to the rest of them.

The book looks at different areas around the world at the time that Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

While I was in Jena I bought Zeitenräume: Kartografische Spaziergänge durch die Geschichte der Stadt Jena by André Nawrotzki.

The book uses maps to illustrate the changes in the Jena city center from about 1200 to the present. This is the old city area where the Jenaer Altstadtfest is being held this week.

The text of the book is in German, but thankfully there are some great on-line translation tools to help me read through the book.

I was also keeping my eye out for Penguin Popular Classics in the series that I collect. I was able to find three more volumes. It looks like they are transitioning to a new design or series, or I would probably have found more. I just counted and I now have 46 titles in this series.

The first is Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. I have read this book, but wanted this edition for my collection. It will fit nicely between The Woman in White by Collins and Nostromo by Conrad.

The Canterbury Tales: A Selection by Geoffrey Chaucer brought back some good memories of studying it in College Prep English. At one time I could quote the first 20 or so lines of The General Prologue.

Whan the April with his showres soote

The drought of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every vein in swich licour,

…….

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson is a great tale of adventure. I have read this book several times and have enjoyed it each time.

This copy of the book is now sitting on the shelf between Ivanhoe and Dracula. If I had a copy of Frankenstein from the series it would then sit between Frankenstein and Dracula.

The three Penguin Popular Classics books shown in this post are all on Mr. Hill’s Novel List. Click on the link to find out more about this list of books from one of my favorite teachers.

Steven