Buenos Aires, Sanditon, Indie Bookshops, Gothic Cornwall & More: Endnotes 14 May

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 neon beacon above is Latino Sandwich, a lively café in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It’s just the kind of place we look for when we travel: local ingredients, people from the neighborhood in a line out the door, and rave reviews. The menu is a wonderland of ‘sink sandwiches,’ i.e., sammies so messy and stuffed with ingredients they should be eaten standing over a sink, plus colorful salads and homemade desserts (banana pineapple cake! caramel cheesecake!). Their tagline? ‘We work because we love this sh*t.’ {more}

• CrimeReads celebrates the crime fiction series that defined the last decade — and The Guardian explores the Japanese whodunnits called Honkaku.

• Make perfect roasted peppers with a Bulgarian tabletop bonfire.

• These Victorian Bathing Machines are both charming and so prudish! ‘Once deep enough in the surf, our bather would then exit the cart using the door facing away from prying eyes on the beach and proceed to paddle. For inexperienced swimmers (which would have been most Victorian women in their billowing swimwear), some beach resorts offered the service of a dipper, a strong person of the same sex who would escort the bather out to sea in the cart and essentially push them into the water and yank them out when they were done. As long you as you didn’t drown, for the average Victorian, this sobering experience could be considered a successful day at the beach.’

• I’ve been a subscriber to the free What to Read If newsletter for a few months, and it’s very well done: interviews with authors, book recs based on mood, snappy writing.

• Inside the World’s Most Beloved Independent Bookstores.

• In honor of International Dylan Thomas Day…

• Yes, there are scientific reasons why we’re so drawn to lakes, rivers, and oceans.

• Free broth in Myanmar. Meat sticks in China. Ketchup in Turkey. Here are 12 Street Food Rules You Don’t Know You’re Breaking in Asia.

• These postcards of mid-20th-century airports are a fun blast from the past.

• Here’s a double-dose of Emily Dickinson awesomeness: Electric Lit examines how imagination can fill in archival gaps, and Brain Pickings shares the love letters Emily wrote to her friend Susan Gilbert.

• Why, yes, a trip to Sweden in the summer would be fantastic.

• 5 famous quotes from Shakespeare, explained.

• I found this long read about Johannes Kepler, science fiction, astronomy, and witchcraft absolutely riveting.

• Our Czech friends tease me because I like to drink Becherovka, an herbal liqueur made in the city of Karlovy Vary. ‘That’s what old people drink,’ they say.

• Kind of related: This guy loves Prague trams so much, he installed one in his room.

• Quiz: Domestic animals of the world. I got only 8 right.

• This guide to Jane Austen’s Sanditon is a good read.

• Related: Willow and Thatch recommends 30 period romances you haven’t seen. (The Night Watch looks so good! ‘…a poignant tale of liberation and loss, following the lives of four young Londoners throughout different stages of the Second World War.’ As does Z: The Beginning of Everything, a fictionalized biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, starring Christina Ricci.)

• Here’s an excerpt about the houses featured in Agatha Christie’s mysteries from the new book House of Fiction: From Pemberley to Brideshead, Great British Houses in Literature and Life by Phyllis Richardson.

• No biggie! Just a bible with a gun inside that could be fired without opening the book!

• CATNIP: The 10 Creepiest Gothic Novels.

• CATNIP II: The Reckoning: The creative allure of Gothic Cornwall.

• A few weeks ago, I recommended The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik. She recently released a beautiful book club guide that you will love, book club or no. It’s got discussion questions, recipes, ‘20 fashions, flapper hairstyles, and more. Get your free copy here.

• This interview with cartoonist Alison Bechdel is filled with all kinds of inspiring insights. But this is my favorite response: When asked why she wanted to write a book about working out, she said, ‘I couldn’t think of anything else to write about that I felt some degree of passion about in a similar way. It’s this blissful, conflict-free part of my life where I am doing something fun. It occurred to me, Why not take that blissful, conflict-free thing, turn it into a cerebral project, and ruin it for yourself? So that’s what I did.’

• 4 words: The Golden Retriever Experience.

Wishing you the metaphorical joy and comfort of a pack of golden retrievers.

Top image courtesy of Nathana Rebouças/Unsplash.