ORANJESTAD – Books, they can shake your world upside down. A good book is changing your mood like that perfect vacation spot that energizes your spirit. Take these two together and what you get is a vacation book, a memory of that wonderful, heavenly place where you spent your valuable leisure time. Aruba Today dived into a local book store and wondered which Aruba books thrill the visitor’s mind. Sylvia Wouters, store manager at Bruna Book Store, gladly helped us out and informed us about a small selection of Happy Island miracles in pictures and words.
Aruba Point to Point by Federico Cabello
“Beautiful pictures of Aruba, this is a perfect coffee table book to dream away with”, explains
Sylvia. The book has 192 full color pages and more than 400 photos in a landscape format of 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches. In the words of the author: “Slipping beyond a dynamic tourist industry to discover its wild and undeveloped beauty. Starting at the extreme north of the island, at California Lighthouse, I travel south along pristine beaches of white sand and calm, translucent seas, passing hotels, sailboats and shipwrecks as I go. At the southern tip, it is hard not to wish that the island would never end. Then back up the rocky East coast, where time and the eternal embrace of the waves have opened secret bays and stunning beaches in the shelter of rock walls. From beach to beach, point to point, cave to cliff to boat to bird, Aruba truly is… One Happy Island.”
Bird Wildlife of Aruba Hardcover by Greg Peterson
Popular book that gives an overview of Aruba’s birds together with descriptions. The book
contains full page photographs of over two hundred species of birds taken in Aruba’s wildlife. A checklist, for scientific and educational purposes, is at the end of the book containing the
names of all bird species that can be found in Aruba. Where possible, the status (resident,
migrant, and vagrant, introduced) and abundance (common, fairly common, uncommon,
scarce, and rare) of the particular bird species will be added to the checklist.
Island Life, Aruba’s Best-Kept Diary by Rona Coster
The book is a selection of columns written by Rona Coster between 1992 and 2004. Â The
column appeared for the first time under the title Island Life in 1992 in The News, a local
English-language newspaper. The Island Life columns were very factual and had a very strong educational undertone. Marking its 25th anniversary the column has become part of Aruba’s history and collective memory.  “For those who were part of history to remember those days and for the next generations and Aruba’s visitors to learn about our islands valuable traditions, movements and contributors”, quoted by Karin Swiers, the book’s editor and publisher, at Visitaruba.com.
We Are Aruba by Linda Reijnders
Worldly life tales of islanders that come from 76 different countries. This is a book that tells the stories of immigrants who make up for the multicultural society that Aruba is. A world within an island, a cocktail of people. The book is visibly enriched with a picture of each interviewed immigrant and an image of her/his country as well as a map with the country’s location. In the back you will find a list with all nationalities living in the island and their numbers.
