Llandudno Pier, Poet Amanda Gorman, Paper Dandelions, Anne Brontë & More: Endnotes 22 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.

That colorful gentleman above was photographed at Llandudno Pier, an amusement and fishing pier located on the northern tip of Wales. Built from 1876-1878, the pier is an Edwardian and Victorian masterpiece, constructed of lacy wrought-iron lattice and wooden decking. It stretches 2295 feet (700m) into the Irish Sea, with arcade games (Down The Clown! Fortune-telling by Zoltar!), food stands (homemade donuts! fresh chips!), shops, and a fishing platform along the way. As the story goes, Queen Victoria was once in the audience for Professor Codman’s Punch & Judy Show — and that same family has been performing the puppet show since 1860 in a red-and-white striped tent near the entrance of the pier. {more}

• We’ve all fallen in love and respect with poet Amanda Gorman, right?! Here are 10 things to know about her and the full text of her luminous poem The Hill We Climb. (You can also pre-order her upcoming book of the same name and her children’s book Change Sings.)

• These sweet paper dandelions will be sprouting up all over Canada in 2021. Artist Monique Martin’s handmade creations are showcased in an exhibit called Context is Everything, and it will be on display throughout the country. (Thank you to Clever Manka for sharing this link.)

• This travel quiz is quite challenging — I only got 9 correct!. It’s also filled with fascinating places. Astute podcast followers will immediately recognize one of the questions and answers.

• Anne Brontë is sometimes considered to be the ‘forgotten’ Brontë sister, but her novels The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Agnes Grey are feminist masterpieces with firecracker heroines. It seems wildly unfair that during 2020, which should have been Anne’s massive 200th birthday celebration at the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth, England, the pandemic meant the museum was shut down. This video pays tribute to Anne with some of the info and objects from the museum’s collection.

• So chilly! A collection of winter thrillers — Snowstorms! Mountain chalets! Murder!

• We love the graphic memoir Persepolis, and this travel guide from the British Museum is a lovely way to transport to the ancient city in your imagination.

• I recommended Brigid Brophy’s novel The Snow Ball a few weeks ago. This gorgeously written essay from Rosalind Jana captures everything I loved about this quirky little book.

• I was not previously familiar with the cute animal known as the coatimundi, but now I’m in love.

• Last year, the Rosenbach in Philadelphia hosted a weekly ‘Sundays with Dracula’ book club. It was enormously successful, so this year, they’re tackling Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The free Sundays with Frankenstein book club starts this Sunday, 24 January, and the videos of the discussions are available online afterward if you can’t make it to the live meeting.

• This is very exciting news for writerly types: Natasha Pulley, the author of The Bedlam Stacks and The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is teaching an online writing course. Introduction to writing fantasy is hosted by the University of Cambridge and takes place during one fabulous weekend in July.

• Our Vietnam coverage comes to a close this week. Have you simmered a pot of pho yet?! This video from Cameron Stauch, the author of Vegetarian Viet Nam (and our Prague pal) is filled with delicious ideas to bring a little more Vietnam into your kitchen.

• Bookish podcast of the week: Sidedoor from Smithsonian takes us behind the scenes of the museum with fascinating stories about the more than 155 million treasures in its vast collection. In this episode, they discuss how Wonder Woman catapulted from comic book character to icon.

• Travel podcast of the week: Is it too soon to look ahead to travel?! Let’s be optimistic with The Upgrade podcast. In this episode, they discuss the places they can’t wait to visit, 2021 travel trends, hot new hotels, and more.

Hope you’re feeling inspired and optimistic.

Top image courtesy of Richard Beatson/Unsplash.