More Books

The books I selected for our trip, which haven't arrived yet, were amongst those recommend by Viking and are available from Longitude Books and no doubt Amazon. Since the cruise starts in Amsterdam, Amsterdam, A Traveler's Literary Companion seemed like a good choice. It is a collection of 17 contemporary short stories, organized by districts, by modern Dutch writers set amid the canals, cafes and neighborhoods of Amsterdam. It was edited by Manfred Wolf.

My second choice fit in with a lot of the buildings we will see along the rivers and with my interest in architecture. It is The Gothic Enterprise: A Guide to Understanding the Medieval Cathedral by Robert Scott. After all these years since college I doubt I will be able to recognize one historic style from another. Two things about these buildings that are going to make it all the more difficult are that construction sometimes took hundreds of years so that the cathedral may have started as Gothic but finished as Baroque. The other extenuating circumstance is that so many of those buildings have been destroyed and rebuilt so many times. How conscientious were each of those restoration efforts?

Lastly is a recipe book called All along the Rhine: Recipes, Wines and Lore from Germany,  France, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein and Holland by Kay Nelson. The Rhine is the first of the several rivers we will traverse, the Main and the Danube being the others. It is a collection of over 130 contemporary and traditional recipes that cover the culinary history and winemaking traditions of the countries along the Rhine. It also has literary excerpts, legends and lore throughout the book.

Ordinarily I would have bought them used but in this instance I plan to leave them in the small library on board the Viking Ve. The recipe book may be the exception.