I love book bags and have a growing collection of them. This summer two more entered my life.

The first was from my friend Kate who went to Ireland and brought me home a bag from Dubray Books in Galway (I blogged about it here). Inside the bag was a copy of John Boyne’s This House Is Haunted, which was released in the States on October 8th–just in time for Halloween reading.

The second is from my friend Cayt went to Paris and brought me home a bag from Shakespeare and Company. Inside was an English version copy of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. Cayt had looked for a French version of a Cather novel, but there were none in stock, which could be a good thing (sold out) or a bad thing (no interest). What is hopeful about the book she did get for me is that it seems to have been read by a native French speaker because there are French annotations/translations scattered throughout. Inside the book was a postcard of, appropriately, a landscape painting.

The postcard was written out by someone living/staying in Paris, but never sent. The handwriting was hard to decipher, but I didn’t detect any commentary on the subject of Cather or her novel.

The back of the bag features a vintage image from inside the bookstore.

Shakespeare and Company inventory tag.

Annotations in French.

Do you read books in a language other than your native tongue? I have plans to get back to reading in German. I’ve never been particularly graceful at speaking the language (I know, I know: German isn’t exactly a graceful language to begin with), but I used to be pretty good at reading and writing it. Earlier this year I bought a copy of The Reader (Der Vorleser) by Bernhard Schlink in German and had planned to start trying to read it this fall, but then prep for our move started and that got rescheduled for next year.