Italian Foxes, Poison Pen Letters, Author Fighters, Poem Joy & More: Endnotes 01 March

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 pretty red fox above lives in an equally picturesque area: Parco della Maremma (also known as Parco dell’Uccellina) a stretch of coast along the Mediterranean that boasts forest, mountains, and a pristine beach. You can tour on horseback, bicycle, canoe, or on foot — and along the way you might meet deer, badgers, fox, porcupines, hares, martens, maybe a wolf or wild boar, and the ancient Maremma cattle. There are also geese, cranes, osprey, falcons, woodpeckers, and owls. Basically, if you go there, you’re a Disney prince or princess. Enjoy this short video tour (with an excellent soundtrack); this is also a good one.

• The real-life story on which the new film Wicked Little Letters is based. ‘The unusual part of this is that these letters were tapping into neighboring issues to do with dirty back gardens. It’s a way of understanding neighboring — particularly feminine neighboring — at the time.’

• Eugène-François Vidocq and the birth of the detective: ‘According to his memoirs, Eugène-François Vidocq escaped from more than twenty prisons (sometimes dressed as a nun). Working on the other side of the law, he apprehended some 4000 criminals with a team of plainclothes agents. He founded the first criminal investigation bureau — staffed mainly with convicts — and, when he was later fired, the first private detective agency. He was one the fathers of modern criminology and had a rap sheet longer than his very tall tales.’

• Have you ever played Street Fighter and thought to yourself, ‘I would enjoy this game so much more if it was Leo Tolstoy wailing on Charles Dickens. I just can’t enjoy a fighting game unless it’s made up of classic writers!’ This is the game for you:

• Oh, the dreamy Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc on the French Riviera. Is this the world’s best and most photographed hotel?

• Only loosely related: 16 Eiffel Tower Replicas Located Outside of Paris.

• Whenever anyone asks me how learning Czech is coming along, I want to point them to an article like this. ‘…Czech secured its place as the 8th most challenging language for English speakers to learn, based on the latest data available.’

• Categories and genres are weird things. Sometimes they make perfect sense; sometimes they feel like mental sandpaper: Coming to terms With ‘cozy’ fiction.

• This is lovely:

• Honoring Palestinian Culinary Tradition in Arkansas. ‘For one baker and educator in Northwest Arkansas, food is a connection to her family’s roots in Gaza — and an essential way to share the stories of their culture.’

• This is so cool! For just £40, you can adopt a favorite classic from the British Library. It’s like choosing a book from The Cemetery of Forgotten Books in real life.

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: Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis and Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life by Nell Greenfieldboyce. Then Mel talks about how she’s delving into Shakespeare. [transcript]

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/StrongSense and get on your way to being your best self.

Links

• Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis

• King Nyx by Kirsten Bakis

• Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life by Nell Greenfieldboyce

Distraction of the Week: Delving into Shakespeare

• Review: David Tennant in Macbeth

• Watch David Tennant recite a bit of Macbeth to honor the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio.

• BBC Radio: Macbeth

• Hamlet with David Tennant (2009)

• The Guardian Review: David Tennant in Hamlet

• Richard II with David Tennant (2013)

• The Guardian Review: David Tennant in Richard II

• Much Ado About Nothing with David Tennant and Catherine Tate (2011)

• The Guardian Review: Much Ado About Nothing

• Legends of Literature YouTube: Shakespeare Analysis

• Chop Bard podcast — ‘the cure for boring Shakespeare’

• Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth by A.C. Bradley on Amazon and Project Gutenberg

• Open Source Shakespeare — all the plays, sonnets, and poems

By the pricking of my thumbs, something awesome this way comes.

Top image courtesy of Federico Di Dio Photography/Unsplash.