A Landmark Pub, Foghorn Tunes, Literary Houses, Capri & More: Endnotes 04 September

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.

Nope, that building above is not a set from a Wes Anderson film. It’s one of the best pubs in London, and it has a very colorful history. From Oscar Wilde’s time, circa 1879, until the mid-1980s, it was a gay-friendly pub; I like to imagine Oscar sauntering through the front door, tossing off bon mots. The interior is a spectacular example of traditional pub decor with art nouveau touches, private booths, fireplaces, and classical busts on top of the bar. No wonder it’s been the shooting location for several films, including the black-and-white noir thriller Victim (1961), the 1969 musical Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Travels with My Aunt (1972), based on the novel by Grahame Greene and starring the indomitable Maggie Smith.

• A Room with a View is one of my all-time favorite novels and would top my list of books set in Florence. From The Guardian, here are 9 more Florence stories for your consideration.

• CrimeReads answers the question: Why Are We So Fascinated by Houses in Literature? (If you, like me, are very into manor house stories, please help yourself to my previous posts on the subject.)

• 26 jokes about travel that will make you laugh and then cry. I gotta admit, I felt #4 in my bones.

• Oh! To be wearing enormous sunglasses and frolicking on the island of Capri. GoFugYourself shares delightful vintage photos.

• We were thrilled to find ourselves on this list from Podchaser: 15 Podcasts to Check Out This Weekend. Perhaps you’ll find some new faves on the list!

• It’s true: Just about every pub in Prague has the same (delicious) items on its menu. Here’s the historical reason why.

• The gripping story of the stormy weekend that led Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. ‘Mary Shelley’s nightmare in the Alps is the stuff of literary legend. But the truth about her trip to Geneva with Percy and Byron – which includes volcanic eruptions, a monkey and a peacock - is even stranger.’

• Pretty sure I need one of these immediately.

• Do you know about The Walker Library of The History of Human Imagination?! Here’s a video tour, a photo gallery, and TED talks. So dreamy! (I just learned of it when David and I watched The Booksellers documentary.)

• This story about author Polly Crosby’s famous illustrator relatives is very charming — and her novel The Book of Hidden Wonders sounds like just the kind of thing for a book-loving reader (which is all of us, amirite?!)

• This new version of Pride and Prejudice from Chronicle Books will be out on 15 September, and it comes with ‘19 letters from the characters’ correspondence, written and folded by hand.’ Is it too soon to think about holiday gifts?! For myself?

• Let the romantic, slightly mournful sound of San Francisco fog horns wash over you, and enjoy the cool thing that Austin Kleon did after he heard the recording.

• Fascinating! A peek inside Edith Wharton’s library and what it tells us about her reading habits.

• Want to play a literature-based online card game? Electric Lit has a new game called Digital Papercuts that’s a mashup of Apples to Apples™ and Cards Against Humanity.™

• In this talk from the Happiness Festival, Philip Davis talks about the connection between reading and mental health.

• Related: Discover magazine on how reading fiction increases empathy and encourages understanding. ‘[With] someone who you’re married to… or a close friend, you can actually get to know them. Reading fiction enables you to sample across a much wider range of possible people and come to understand something about the differences among them.’

• Bookish podcast of the week: Newbery Tart is a podcast about kids’ books for adults, hosted by a librarian and a bookseller. In this episode, they talk about the finalist of the 1971 Newbery Medal for excellence in American children’s literature — Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Engdahl — and get into what we expect from heroines in sci-fi.

• Travel podcast of the week: Did you know that there’s a podcast called America’s National Parks?! How great is that! In this episode, you can hear a very entertaining 12-minute story about Dinosaur National Monument on the border between Utah and Colorado.

Synonyms for curious: inquisitive, interested, investigative, disquisitive, meddling, snoopy (not the dog)

Top image courtesy of Simone Hutsch/Unsplash.