Bayeux, Spooky Appalachia, Final Girls, Madame Tussaud & More: Endnotes 20 October

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.

The beautiful medieval city above is Bayeux in the Normandy region of northwestern France. The old town center is a picturesque warren of cobbled streets lined with half-timbered houses, all leading to the majestic Cathédrale Notre-Dame, a Norman-Gothic masterpiece. If you’re a history buff, Bayeux is a great place to visit. The city was the first to be liberated from the Nazis in June 1944, and it’s an excellent starting point to visit D-Day landing beaches. It’s also home to the Bayeux Tapestry (Tapisserie de Bayeux), an 11th-century tapestry depicting the 1066 Norman invasion of England. Here’s a lovely slow travel walking tour through Bayeux.

• The Perks of Being a Book Lover is one of our must-listen readerly podcasts. It’s so much fun to hear to the hosts Carrie and Amy talk about books. So we were delighted to be their guests on a recent episode where we recommended two great books set in the library (and both are different from the titles we talked about in our podcast episode The Library: Endless Books, Reading Nooks, and Lots of Possibility.

• The 15 must-read small press books of fall, according to Electric Lit — and 10 new audiobooks for fall.

• Did you know that My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante has been adapted into a graphic novel? You can see the delicate, somewhat moody illustrations here.

• 9 Unexpected Things You Didn’t Know You Could Bring Through TSA. ‘Feel free to pack your microwave, bowling ball, and bucket of live lobsters.’

• Oooh, fun! You can take a 100-minute spooky train ride through the woods of Pennsylvania. It’s called the ‘No Hope After Dark’ train! ‘Our train will depart from New Hope to our festival at the unknown, where you will venture through our brand-new haunted maze, where live actors lurk around every twisted turn.’

• For when you’re between books: 49 Classic Halloween Movies That Are Guaranteed to Put You in a Spooky Mood.

• So good:

• Jason Reynolds, the author of Long Way Down, continues to be completely awesome. (WaPo gift link)

• For your Spooky Season reading needs: 5 books about final girls, a reading list of badass covens, 9 spooky literary short story collections, and 5 darkly absurd horror books to read when you need a laugh.

• Beyond Panama: 7 famous (and beautiful) canals you should know.

• Take a brief tour through the eerie history of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. (Psst… the novel Little by Edward Carey is a Gothic fictional bio of Madame Tussaud. Her story begins in a Swiss village and takes us to the Monkey House in Paris, the Palace of Versailles, and a prison during the French Revolution — all in the company of uncanny figures made of wax.)

• Goals:

• National Geographic answers the question: Why are the Appalachian Mountains home to so many supernatural legends? ‘The supernatural creatures said to roam these forests are intimately tied to the landscape, which is older than most of life on Earth.’

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: The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope by José Andrés and I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko. Then Dave shares his enthusiasm for the Best Public Library of the Year. [transcript]

Links

• The World Central Kitchen Cookbook: Feeding Humanity, Feeding Hope by José Andrés

• I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko

• World Central Kitchen website

• World Central Kitchen’s Chicken Chili Verde recipe

• ‘You May Have Been Poisoned’: How an Independent Russian Journalist Became a Target

• 2023 Nominees for Public Library of the Year

• Barcelona Library Named Best New Public Library in the World

• Jay-Z limited edition library cards

Today is an excellent day to visit your local library.

Top image courtesy of Stephen Bridger/Shutterstock.