Souvenir books

A bookstall in Strasbourg.

My idea of perfect souvenirs to bring back from a vacation are books. (In second place come tea mugs.) Such books remind me for years afterward of my travels and the specific cities and shops were those books were purchased.

My recent river cruise from Zurich to Paris provided surprisingly little time for shopping, but still I was able to browse briefly at a few bookstalls along streets (bookstalls are something Europe has in abundance that the United States could use more of) and step into a couple of bookstores.

One of those stores was a small shop called Buchhandlung Heimes in Koblenz, Germany. The books all seemed to be in German, and when  a clerk asked if she could help me I told her that I liked bookstores and just wanted to look around. Then she led me to small case, with shelves about 18 inches long, where all the books were in English. Mostly these were books, printed in England, that I had never seen before or in editions I had never seen before. I enjoyed browsing and found two books I suddenly craved, finally settling for just one, An Unremarkable Body by Elisa Lodato.

Postcard showing Shakespeare and Company, Paris.

Once in Paris I knew I had to visit Shakespeare and Company, the famous English-language bookstore near the Seine. We left our bus tour of the city when it got close to that point, then stopped at the jaw-dropping Sainte-Chapelle and, after a sidewalk lunch, made our way to the shop. It has an incredible selection of books but also, or so it seemed, almost as many shoppers, many of whom weren't even speaking English. The two books I wanted were on the discount tables outside the store, Bamboo, a collection of essays by William Boyd, and a used copy of Willa Cather's My Antonia. The latter book was published a hundred years ago this year, so I had been looking for a copy of it.

As I made my purchase, the clerk asked if I would like the name of the store stamped inside each book. I said I did. Apparently I am not alone in buying books as vacation souvenirs.