I haven’t been sharing much about new book acquisitions, and have been tragically absent from The Butterflies & Aliens Library for a while, but this new acquisition is incredibly exciting for me and hopefully will spur on a new flurry of posts over the coming months.

Last year, I had the privilege and thrill of going to Frankfurt for the Frankfurt Book Fair. It’s a big deal in the publishing world. It was also my first ever trip to Europe and a solo trip. I had the BEST time ever doing many touristy things for a couple days prior to the Fair beginning.

One of the highlights was visiting the Goethe Haus. Reading The Picture of Dorian Gray in my teen years was a gateway drug to reading other classics and it made sense that Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quickly appeared on my radar. I mean, a book about selling your soul to the devil in return for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures – how can you resist? And having a chance to visit the rebuilt home of his birth (the original was destroyed during the war) was a bucket list moment. 

I tried to find an older quality hardcover edition of Faust in German while I was in Frankfurt but sadly ran out of time and only came across new paperback versions of the book. So I came home empty-handed. 

But wanting a hardcover copy has remained in my brain, and when I was on Instagram a few weeks ago I saw a post by Salamander Salt Curio featuring a 1939 hardcover German language edition of Faust. I knew it was meant to be mine and messaged immediately to snap it up!

It arrived quickly and I was able to pick it up from the post office on Saturday, which also happened to be my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! I am very pleased to have this book in my collection.

If you haven’t read Faust, maybe this post will inspire you to give it go.

Happy Reading!

– Stacey