Scarborough, Fictional Hotels, Poetry Fashion, Traditional Mysteries & More: Endnotes 13 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.

Scarborough is a seaside town in North Yorkshire, England. You might be familiar with that name from the Simon & Garfunkel song ‘Scarborough Fair’. But in the mid-19th century, it was a luxurious resort town where well-to-do Victorians went on a holiday to take the waters. That beautiful building above is the Grand Hotel. When it opened in 1867, it was the largest hotel and the largest brick structure in all of Europe. The hotel was designed around the theme of time: four towers to represent the seasons, 12 floors for the months of the year, 52 chimneys to symbolize the weeks, and 365 bedrooms, one for each day of a non-leap year. The hotel was a favorite of Anne Brontë, the author of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. She spent her last days there, taking the waters at the spa and riding a donkey along the beach, before succumbing to tuberculosis on 28 May 1849. Learn more in this video about the history of the Grand Hotel.

• So relevant to our interests: A review of the book Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch. ‘If the field of world literature in the 21st century has become unwieldy — a contested collection of books or a network of overlapping discourses — Around the World in 80 Books performs a masterful trick of scale: translating world literature to the individual reader’s or traveler’s experience.’

• Treehugger advocates for the Japanese practice of tsundoku, a.k.a., buying more book than you can read.

• Love this marriage of poetry and fashion from Twitter; click through to see more. (ht Clever Manka)

• Yes, please, sign me up for a holiday at any (or all!) of these 12 fictional hotels.

• Sorta related: The Sylvia Beach Hotel in Oregon is a hotel for book lovers, a bed-and-breakfast with literary-themed rooms. ‘Each of the Sylvia Beach hotel’s rooms is decorated with mementos of famous authors — from Jane Austen to Alice Walker to Dr. Seuss… truly a retreat for readers, writers, and visitors who want to rest, restore, and read. There are no TVs, radios, telephones, or Wi-Fi at the Sylvia Beach, but who needs them when there are books and journals tucked into every nook and cranny?’ (Thank you to friend-of-SSoP Lisa M. for sharing this with us.)

• Stories of paintings accidentally hung upside down will never not delight me.

• Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Book Store, has a new short story available online. Read ‘In the Stacks’ — and be sure to play with the music controls!

• Before we say a final goodbye to 2022, here are Crime Read’s picks for the best traditional mysteries of the year.

• This is delicious fun: Getting Lost in the World’s Largest Stack of Menus. ‘You can feel the weight of history when handling these historical artifacts… If a menu is stained, it makes you wonder where the stains came from. What did the original possessor of the menu order? I imagined New York City’s hungry denizens enjoying unfamiliar dishes like pig’s knuckle in jelly or calf’s head with brain sauce. You might find yourself wondering what frostfish is when looking at a Waldorf-Astoria menu from 1901….’

• Treat yourself to a whole lot of cute with this roundup of the top 9 children’s book illustrators from Culture Trip.

• Name That Thing MegaQuiz! (I got 24/30.)

New Episode of The Library of Lost Time

In each mini-podcast episode, we discuss two books at the top of our TBR, then share a fun book- or travel-related distraction. Get all the episodes and books galore here.

In this episode, we get excited about two books: City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita and Endurance: 100 Tales of Survival, Adventure and Exploration by Levison Wood. Then Mel talks about why Realm is her favorite new place to find awesome fiction podcasts. [transcript]

Links

• City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita

• Video: Iris Yamashita talks about writing City Under One Roof

• Endurance: 100 Tales of Survival, Adventure and Exploration by Levison Wood

• Walking the Himalayas by Levison Wood

• Walking the Nile by Levison Wood

• Real.fm — our new podcast network

• Marigold Breach, starring Jameela Jamil and Mannu Jacinto

• The Witch Who Came in From the Cold, a spy-witch story set in Cold-War-era Prague

• Spark Hunter, a story of AI gone wrong with Mark Rylance, Vanessa Redgrave, and so many other awesome cast members

Take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and relax your shoulders.

Top image courtesy of Gordon Bell/Shutterstock.