Havana, Big Plot Twists, Sweet Home Libraries, Gothic Fiction & More: Endnotes 28 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.

If we had our way this weekend, we would teleport to Havana, Cuba, for salsa and rumba and cha cha cha and Afro-Cuban jazz and mambo and timba. Can’t you just hear the guitars and maracas and bongos now? We could dance in the streets, sip a mojito, and maybe hitch a ride in a big ol’ pink 1940s Buick. Catch Havana fever right here.

• Aminatta Forna is the author of a book we love (The Hired Man, set in Croatia). She just released a collection of essays called The Window Seat. Her family is from Scotland and Sierra Leone; in this essay in Orion Magazine, she goes home to the Shetland Islands to trace the path of her great-great-grandmother.

• Timely reading: 15 Books That Will Help You Understand The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

• Surely, you want to know the six best places in the world to see a walrus.

• The spirit of Eurovision is eternal! Here’s a look at Eurovision fashion through the decades.

• 8 Plot Twists That Will Live in Your Head Rent-Free.

• These colorful hotels — in the world’s first book about hotels in Iran! — are so enchanting. (For more, visit our Iran Destination Page.)

• It’s one of my life goals to attend a dinner party with an enormous table like this.

• This charming brooch reminds me of the novel Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown. Long live Mad Hannah Mabbot!

• Haunted Voices, a collection of Gothic stories from Scotland, is one of my favorite books I’ve read for Strong Sense of Place. Haunt Publishing just announced the lineup of books for 2021-2022, and it’s very exciting. Learn more here and jump over to Kickstarter to pre-order.

• Somewhat related: The 2020 Bram Stoker Award winners were announced.

• Why not peruse some first-rate home libraries? (Via the eminently readable Shayne’s Bookish Newsletter.

• Today is the anniversary of the death of Anne Brontë. Until recently, she seemed doomed to be the forgotten literary sister, but her gripping novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has been getting much-deserved attention of late. I like to think she would get a kick out of this video.

Wishing you all the reading time your heart desires.

Top image courtesy of Jessica Knowlden/Unsplash.