Secrets of the NYPL, a Jane Austen Musical, Istanbul Cats & More: Endnotes 10 April

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 jaunty feline above is strutting the alleys of Istanbul, Turkey. Cats are cherished in Istanbul, and it’s estimated there are about a million of them in the city. The #catsofinstanbul hashtag on Instagram is a treasure trove of adorable furriness, and the organization with the same name is supported by about 300 volunteers who act as ad hoc kitty caregivers. See more photos here and watch a trailer for the documentary KEDI, that follows the hijinks of seven Istanbul cats.

• Entertainment alert for tonight (10 April): Enjoy the FREE premiere of Pride & Prejudice: The Musical — 6:30 p.m. ET with a rebroadcast at 10:30 p.m. It’s a new adaptation from Paul Gordon, who gave us Jane Eyre: The Musical. (Fun fact: I listen to that soundtrack all the time.

• The University of Notre Dame addresses the question, What good is literature?: ‘During engaged reading, we compare the protagonist’s actions to what we’d do in a similar situation, or what we’ve done in the past. We practice making decisions that have consequences….’ (Of all the articles I’ve read on reading and empathy, this is the most comprehensive.)

• This is beautifully written and quite poignant: Writer Lauren Markham on the last train trip before everything changed.

• Our dear friend Anne over at Modern Mrs. Darcy has been hosting the Stay at Home Book Tour. Some of your favorite authors with new releases are talking about their books and answering questions on Zoom. If you miss the live events, you can catch all the replays right here.

• Whoa! Cozy British villages (that may or may not be the sight of poisonings over tea that are investigated by a cleverer-than-she-seems heroine), before and after the pandemic lockdown.

• Let’s save some bookstores! What started as a spreadsheet is now an app… The new Save Your Bookstore app is a crowdsourced list of bookstores and the services they’re offering: gift cards, curbside pickups, free deliveries. The app was created and is run by a volunteer team — and you can add your local indie to the database!

• Beware the deadly curse of the Petrified Forest!

• When I was a kid, my family drove from Pennsylvania to Florida for a vacation every winter. And we always stopped to see the mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs.

• This neighborhood in Paris looks like 1942. A crew was filming at in intersection in Montmartre when the coronavirus shut down production, so the streets still look charmingly retro.

• If you’ve listened to the episode of our podcast called The Sea: Tales of Poets and Pirates, you know that David is an advocate for reading Moby Dick. Here are some expert tips to help you navigate this classic tome.

• Intriguing! Was the character of Victor Laszlo in Casablanca based on a real-life Czech freedom fighter?

• The Jack Reacher novels are a thrill-a-minute. Author Lee Child comes clean about creating his iconic character.

• Do girls just want to have fun? Cyndi Lauper answers the Proust questionnaire (and makes us fall in love with her all over again).

• It’s no secret that we love Typewronger Books in Edinburgh, Scotland. Now all of us can wear a little bit o’ Typewronger. Similarly, Green Apple Books in San Francisco is one of our all-time favorite used bookshops, and this Stay Home, Read Books hoodie is cozy and great advice.

• Pop quiz! Can you identify these famous landmarks? And how many world capital cities do you know?

• This 25-minute tour of the New York Public Library is from Architectural Digest and reveals the hidden secrets in the Library’s design elements.

• Armchair Travelers… activate!

• Somehow, reading spooky stories is soothing my frayed nerves right now. If that’s you, too, you’ll like this list of 10 Irish gothic novels.

• Author Maggie O’Farrell says, ‘Life is too short to waste time on books you don’t like,’ name-checks Angela Carter, and sings the praises of Charlotte Brontë. This is good stuff.

• In case you like big books, and you cannot lie. (Seriously, some of my all-time faves are on this list of 500(+)-page novels. Although I would definitely add Cryptonomicon.)

• Bookish podcast of the week: On this episode of Sheltering, author Emily St. John Mandel talks about her new novel The Glass Hotel and the unsettling prescience of her much-adored, post-pandemic novel Station Eleven.

• Travel podcast of the week: On our Instagram recently, we shared a photo of the gorgeous library on the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. In this episode of The Amateur Traveler, music journalist Bill Kopp shares his tips for the best things to do and see in the city.

May your spirits be buoyant, and your books be immersive.

Top image courtesy of Maria Teneva.