The New World is in no small part a result of that conquest. W hen you are buying books to read on the road keep in mind you want to have as many words per kilo and per cubic centimeter s possible. It's escapism just as TV is. While traveling you can relax and read some books you wouldn't otherwise read. Y ou can read some of those books you have never quite gotten around to and life while travelling usually is at a pace slow enough to get it into Jane Austin, Herman Melville, or Thomas Hardy.
Classics are usually good on weight and volume too.
T here are used bookstores in Panajachel where you can trade two for one or buy something new to read. In my opinion it is the greatest travel book ever written. His book, written in the last century, is long winded, as Victorian era travel books are want to be. However he came here way back when and one can't help but be amazed at what he saw and how he traveled. Diaz writes about what he found five hundred years ago.