Dark Hedges, Flash Fiction, Victorian Slang, Bookshop Love & More: Endnotes 20 November

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 beautifully twisted beech trees above are found in Armoy in Northern Ireland and are known as the Dark Hedges. They may look familiar to you; they’ve been featured in Game of Thrones. The trees were planted in 1775 by the Stuart family to line the grand approach to their mansion Gracehill House. Although the trees are one of the most photographed sights in Northern Ireland, their natural life is slowly winding down. According to Paddy Cregg from the Woodland Trust, the trees are ‘old age pensioners’ that have about 10 years left in their natural lifespan. But the spectral Grey Lady that is said to haunt the trees will presumably carry on. {more}

• I’ve got the morbs but later, I hope to be mafficking! That’s Victorian slang for ‘I’m temporarily melancholy, but later, I hope to be getting rowdy in the streets.’ If you want to be a cool Victorian talker as I am, help yourself to this dictionary of Victorian slang. You can flip through it online or download the PDF for personal study.

• So posh: 9 film locations from season four of The Crown.

• To the Door by Georgi Gospodinov is a graceful and poignant flash fiction story you can read in about 35 seconds. It’s very good.

• The graphic novel Paul at Home by Michael Rabagliati explores the challenges of aging and the changing roles we play throughout our lives. LitHub has a nice long excerpt.

• ‘Because all bookshops are local and global; they are political nodes and businesses, embassies of democracy and free trade.’

• This piece about soul food in Peru traces the influence of slaves on the cuisine (and also made me very hungry). ‘Some of Peru’s most iconic street foods, from grilled beef-heart anticuchos marinated in a vinegar sauce to the deep-fried doughnut-like picarones made from spiced sweet potatoes, come from a legacy of slavery.’

• We can’t travel right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t toast to the good life. Here are recipes for 7 classic cocktails invented in hotels so you can make them at home. Cheers!

• Take a virtual tour through Ireland’s beautiful libraries.

• We’re thrilled to find ourselves on this list from PopSugar: 13 Podcasts About Books That Every Bookworm Needs to Get Into. We’re in excellent company with What Should I Read Next, Reading Women, Novel Pairings, The Librarian Is In, and more.

• Neat! You can eat at R.E.M.’s favorite diner in Athens, Georgia. Be sure to try the squash casserole!

• Take this quiz to learn what kind of library you are.

• Bookish podcast of the week: Storybound is radio-theater-turned-podcast that features literary stars reading essays, poems, and fiction. In this episode, food journalist extraordinaire Ruth Reichl reads letters to the editor from the Thanksgiving issue of Gourmet magazine.

• Travel podcast of the week: On this episode of The Splendid Table, the hosts talk all about Chinese-American food with Hong Kong-raised chef Lucas Sin.

All the cool kids are wearing masks and reading books.

Top image courtesy of Trevor Cole/Unsplash.