Vintage Bookshelves, Feasting in Zanzibar, Novel Fashion & More: Endnotes 31 January

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.

The fantastical pink tower wrapped in a dragon is Wat Samphran, a Buddhist temple just outside of Bangkok in Thailand. Inside the 17-story building, you’ll find a giant gold Buddha and several shrines. Intrepid visitors can also climb up inside the winding belly of the dragon.

• It’s always fun to eyeball other peoples’ bookshelves, and these vintage photos do not disappoint.

• scribbles notes furiously: How to Travel Like a Crime Novelist

• We love independent bookstores with our whole hearts. Now Bookshop.org is here to bring the indie experience online. Independent bookstores become Bookshop.org affiliates to sell books online, and they earn a 25-percent commission on every sale.

• This art nouveau house in Nancy, France, is Oh là là.

• Note to self: Purchase ticket to Zanzibar asap.

• News you can use: Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

• Louis Vuitton’s models strike a pose on the cover of horror and sci-fi novels. Reading really is in fashion!

• How about anime adapted from manga about a manga bookstore? Meet skull-face bookseller.

• Destination Inspiration: Bodø, Norway. Shortlisted as one of the European Capitals of Culture for 2024!

• Literary Airbnb Reviews from McSweeney’s are just as cleverly snarky as you’d expect. (Shout-out to Claire Diaz-Ortiz for the link.)

• This isn’t new, but slick vocabulary never goes out of style. Are you an abibliophobe and a bibliophagist — or are you more of a logophile?!

• Ken Jennings tells us all about Oymyakon, Russia is the coldest place on Earth.

• Bookish podcast of the week: On the BBC Bookclub podcast, host James Naughtie talks to accomplished authors about their best-known novels. In this installment, Peter Høeg talks about Smilla’s Sense of Snow, which I re-read recently and loved all over again. (But it was stranger and nerdier than I remembered. Have you read it? Let’s chat in comments about it.)

• Travel podcast of the week: Women Who Travel is a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler magazine. In this episode, the hosts talk to Jessica Nabongo, the first black woman to visit every country in the world.

Wishing you a book so good you stay up way too late to read one more chapter.

Top image courtesy of R.M. Nunes.