Heiligenkreuz Abbey, Steampunk Books, Airline Mags, Nunavik & More: Endnotes 08 November

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 Gothic and Romanesque cloister above is found at Heiligenkreuz Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in the Vienna Woods in Austria. It’s the second-oldest (and the oldest continuously active) Cistercian monastery in the world. It’s currently home to more than 100 monks. Founded in 1133 by St. Leopold III of Austria (aka, Leopold the Good), and its name means Holy Cross. The church, cloister, and living quarters of the monastery complex are beautifully preserved — it’s like a time machine to the Middle Ages — and the ‘secret library’ houses illuminated manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries. This is a nice first-hand account of visiting — and a solid video report with fascinating historical tidbits. (Plus, 7 unusual monasteries around the world).

• If you’re a podcast listener, thank you for joining us for Season 6! We’re eager to hear your feedback so we can make Season 7 even better. We would so appreciate your thoughts in this quick survey.

• For when you need a little levity to go along with dastardly deeds: 12 Funny Mysteries to Brighten Your Day.

• This illustrated post is a delight! How to Pack Like Poirot. And now I want to spend the afternoon reading Murder on the Orient Express: The Graphic Novel by Bob Al-Greene. (Thanks to our Patron April for sharing this with us.)

• The lives of literary translators will never not be interesting. Meet Edith Pargeter, aka Ellis Peters: murder-mystery novelist and self-taught Czech translator.

• This charming Swiss hotel is cut off from the world for 12 hours a day. ‘Happily, there are no roads. There is only nature. Sunrises. Sunsets. Stillness. Nothing more. Look around, we have mountains and glaciers and are far from everyday life. This is a challenge, but also our blessing.’

• For more snowy travel needs: Nunavik — With Inuit Storytelling and Arctic Wildlife — Is Opening Up to Travelers. Seals, muskox, polar bears, freshwater springs, and lots of adventure.

• Must-click headline: The Former Home of the Real Mr. Rochester Comes Up for Sale in Skipton. But it turned out to be a lie! The manor was the inspiration for Gateshead Hall (home of the evil Aunt Reed) not Thornfield Hall (the abode of the dreamy, problematic Mr. Rochester).

• 5 steampunk books recommended by Steampunk Scholar Mike Perschon. Technofantasy + retrofuturism + hyper vintage = fun world-building.

• It’s not too soon to start thinking about dreamy destinations for 2025. Here are some ideas from Belmond, inspired by TV shows and films.

• Sorta related: I would like to visit this stunningly beautiful restaurant in the Gare de Lyon in Paris.

• It would be so great to teleport to this open-air art exhibit near the pyramids in Giza.

• Aw, RIP airline magazines. ‘… when in-flight magazines were commonplace, it was the same era in which you could watch a movie on an airplane but they’d fold down a screen every three rows and everyone would be watching the exact same thing at the same time. It was a sense of connection.’

• If our podcast episode about Mongolia — Mongolia: Under the Eternal Blue Sky — made you curious about yurts, maybe you want to consider a trip along the Silk Road in Uzbekistan. ‘…here I was in the Kyzle-Kum desert near the Kazakh border, morning sun turning the sandy hills gold, the Silk Road not far off. And those irresistible camels with their droopy lips, goofy smiles, pie crust hoofs and colorful saddles were waiting for me. Yes, Ikram, I would like to ride a camel.’

• Some solid choices in this list: 25 Extraordinary Books You Can Read in One Sitting.

• Related, but even better: Renee from ItsBookTalk & More put together a massive list of crowd-sourced, top-notch book recommendations. ‘A couple months ago, I asked readers… to give me one book recommendation for a book they thought would appeal to a wide range of readers.’ They delivered! She’s curated a list of 118 ‘non-repeated, thoughtful, and passionate book recommendations.’ (Spoiler: Dave and I contributed!)

• Tasty! Cookbook Stores Are Feeding a Growing Appetite for Community Hubs. I can attest that Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco is fantastic.

New Strong Sense of Place Episode — Seattle: City of Superlatives

Seattle is a mashup of water and mountains — it just might be the ultimate outdoor playground. If you want to go hiking, camping, boating, biking, or meander in a beautiful garden, Seattle is a fantastic place to do all of that.

It can also claim a vast realm of ‘firsts’ in music, architecture, politics, and literature. (Not to mention Bigfoot sightings, if that’s your thing.) There’s grunge music, Elvis appearances, the Seattle Seahawks’ 12th Man, an inordinate number of sunglasses, and more library cards than anywhere else in the United States.

The city also hosted two World’s Fairs: the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in 1909 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush (you do not want to miss the Two Truths and a Lie story about that one!) — and the Century 21 Exposition in 1962. That one — which tried to predict what life in America would be like in the year 2000 and beyond — gave us the Space Needle, the Alweg Monorail, and a car shaped like a rocket.

In this episode, we learn the stories of a few remarkable Seattle women, celebrate Seattle’s superlatives, and share a bookish itinerary for the ‘Most Literate City in the Country.’ Then we recommend seven great books that took us there on the page, including an unusual ghost story, a memoir about living in 1950s Seattle, a thriller set in the world of journalism, three graphic novels that will make you want to take a walk, and a modern fable set in the San Juan islands. [transcript]

Visit our show notes for the list of all the books we discussed, photos, links to fascinating stuff, videos, author info, and more.

Parts of the Strong Sense of Place podcast are produced in udio. Some effects are provided by soundly.

Wishing you a few days filled with the best things.

Top image courtesy of Andreas/Unsplash.