Kilchurn Castle, Godfather Sandwich, Jane Eyre, Kiwi Slang & More: Endnotes 17 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.

That moody vista above features the ruins of Kilchurn Castle, found on a rocky peninsula at the end of Loch Awe, in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It was built in the mid-1400s and was home for 150 years to the Campbells of Glenorchy, the largest and most powerful of the Highland clans. The complex originally included the remaining courtyard and a five-story tower house that featured a grand hall, private chambers, a cellar, and a prison. This video tour of Kilchurn includes stunning images and a very rousing soundtrack.

• This Sunday is the first installment of Sundays with Jane Eyre, a free discussion series put on by the Rosenbach in Philadelphia. Obvs, I’ve signed up and will be spending part of Sunday for the next 30 weeks (!) involved in conversations about my all-time favorite novel. You can, too! Each week, scholars, authors, and professors will join the Rosenbach’s Edward Pettit to discuss 1-2 chapters of the novel. The sessions are recorded and available online afterward, so you don’t have to be physically present for each one unless you want to join in the discussion. The whole schlemiel is free. Get all the details and watch an intro video.

• Related: This is quite weird.

• This is a fun quiz about cafés around the world. I got 9/13; clearly, I need to go visit all of them as soon as possible.

• I’ve been keeping a reading journal in various forms since 2007 (!). It started out as a scribbled list in one of those free monthly calendars with the vinyl cover that you get from, like, an insurance company or a realtor. But this gorgeous, hardcover journal (with a lie-flat binding!) from Anne Bogel (the bookish goddess of Modern Mrs. Darcy and the What Should I Read Next? podcast) is a serious upgrade. It features suggested reading lists and pages for you to make notes about books, including ratings, favorite quotes, who you’d recommend it to, and more. My Reading Life: A Book Journal is available for presale now — hits shelves on 21 September.

• Oh, to be lounging in one of these posh Airbnbs with built-in libraries.

• Alternately, I would like to time-travel back to 1969 and make the Atlantic crossing on the QE2. Please and thank you.

• If you enjoyed our recent podcast episode Newsroom: From Clacking Typewriters to Viral Video, you might want to keep the journalism-related reads going with these 7 funny novels set in the world of newspapers.

• Have you heard the rumblings about disruptions in the supply chain for books? Seems like it’s not just internet innuendo. Publisher’s Weekly has an industry-focused look at the issues, and BookRiot gets into the nitty-gritty of what it could mean for readers like us.

• Yes, you do need to see Met Gala gowns as books. (Click to see the slideshows.)

• The Godfather Sandwich Is Everything and Nothing.

• Yes, yes, yes to this: Why translators should be named on book covers. ‘…words are human, which means that they’re unique and have no direct equivalents. You can see this in English: ‘cool’ is not identical to ‘chilly,’ although it’s similar. ‘Frosty’ has other connotations, other usages; so does ‘frigid.’ Selecting one of these options on its own doesn’t make sense; it must be weighed in the balance of the sentence, the paragraph, the whole, and it is the translator who is responsible, from start to finish, for building a flourishing lexical community that is both self-contained and in profound relation with its model.’

• Are nuns in fiction having a moment?

• Sometimes, you just want to look at beautiful castles in Scotland.

• Last week, we featured eagle hunting Kazakhs of Mongolia at the top of our post. One of our readers (Hi, Aingeal!) sent us this piece about a 13-year-old girl named Aisholpan Nurgaiv who is joining the hunting tradition.

• If you’ve ever daydreamed about being a food writer, Dianne Jacob — the author of Will Write for Food, a must-read for all food writers — has several classes coming up this fall.

• Read the short story that introduced Jeeves the butler to the world.

• This is fun: 32 Words To Know If You Want To Sound Like A Local In New Zealand.

• Heads up! On Thursday, 30 September, the Random House Book Club Happy Hour features a discussion with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of Mexican Gothic and her new novel Velvet Was the Night. It’s free and, probably, awesome. Reserve your spot.

• Related: Listen to LeVar Burton read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s short story ‘On the Lonely Shore.’

• The nominations for the Discover Pods Awards are open, and if you enjoy our show, we would love your vote! You can nominate Strong Sense of Place here — our show seems most relevant to ‘Best Arts Podcast,’ but we would welcome your vote for ‘Best Overall Podcast,’ too. Thank you in advance!

• These shots of an eerie abandoned church in the Czech Republic feel like a good warmup for the impending spooky season. There are just 44 days until Halloween!

Wishing you a pumpkin-spiced latte and fresh morning air.

Top image courtesy of Connor Mollison/Unsplash.