Every Friday, we celebrate the weekend — and all the reading and relaxing and daydreaming time ahead — with Melissa's favorite book- and travel-related links of the week. Why work when you can read fun stuff?!
This post is part of our Endnotes series.
That snazzy black-and-red train up there is crossing the Glenfinnan Viaduct in Glenfinnan, Inverness-shire, Scotland. The viaduct overlooks Loch Shiel which is rumored to be the secret location of the Black Lake near Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films.
We are firmly on Team Train Travel, and the website The Man in Seat Sixty-One is a comprehensive directory for traveling just about anywhere in the world by rail.
Whoa! That book is 632 pages long. How long will it take you to read that book?
Everyone knows there are two types of airport people. We are the arrive-three-hours-early-and-read-your-book-and-drink-coffee type.
The enduring appeal of Jack Reacher and his scrappy adventures in the heart of America.
Lítost — a state of agony and torment created by the sudden recognition of one’s own misery — is just one of the untranslateable words in Czech.
We’ll just leave this here: Book covers as Rihanna outfits. (News you can use: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, author of author of our favorite circus-fantasy-romance-OMG book The Night Circus, is out November 5. Clean your calendar.)
Science! The smell of old books is decoded by Smithsonian Magazine.
Bookish podcast of the week: On BBC In Our Time, host Melvyn Bragg brings his mellifluous voice and sharp mind to a conversation about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Travel podcast of the week: The hosts of Flight of Fancy make the case for why train travel is the best way to see a country.
Top image courtesy of Jack Anstey.
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