I’m still trying to sort through all the fliers and papers I collected on my trip and I ran across another magazine I forgot I had bought, Exberliner, an English language city guide. What is special about the issue I bought is that it’s the literary issue with a focus on English-language bookstores in Berlin.

Why didn’t I have this before I went! Actually last year I did visit one of the bookstores mentioned in the article and now at least I am prepared for next year’s trip. Plus now I also know where to go for some poetry readings.

Anyway, I wanted to post some book reviews tonight but I got sidetracked when I couldn’t find a lot of my photos. Talk about freaking out because I thought I’d lost them forever. Luckily my husband was able to recover the memory card and now my photos are all saved. Big sigh of relief.

So instead of the book reviews I’ll give you a list of books that caught my attention and I wish I could have bought but that Euro was making things a bit expensive so these books remain on the wish list for now. If anyone has read any of these let me know what you think.

• Fortune Like the Moon by Alys Clare
• In the Dark by Deborah Moggach (I read Tulip Fever and enjoyed that book. If this one had been a paperback I probably would have bought it but the hardback prices were killers).
• The Messengers of Death by Pierre Magnan
• The Act of Roger Murgatroyd by Gilbert Adair
• Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell

Don’t read any posters. Read these books.

We saw this poster when we first arrived at the Frankfurt Airport. An auspicious start to good vacation don’t you think?

Even though my German is still not good it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the bookstores. Aside from checking out how well stocked the English book sections are, I also browse around the whole store. I want to see the differences in book cover art, I want to figure out the titles of books and I like to come upon favorite books.

I didn’t go too crazy with the book buying this time around but on my trips to Buchhandlung Hugendubel in Frankfurt and Thalia in Braunschweig I bought the following books:

• Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda
• Hurting Distance by Sophie Hannah
• The Complete Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
• The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Walsh Grindle
• A Jarful of Angels by Babs Horton
• Fixing Shadows by Susan Barrett

I also bought some cute bookmarks and a copy of Marie Claire Idées. Hurrah. I’d heard a lot about this magazine from some of my crafty friends but I hadn’t been able to find one in Dallas. Let’s see if I can still put my knowledge of high school French to good use. At least there are a lot of pictures of pretty things so I’ll enjoy those. Heh.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll tell you about the books I read. Gotta finish up my book reports.