Cranberry Bogs, Close Reading, Shawarma, Tove Jansson's Art & More: Endnotes 22 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.

A good cranberry is like a good friend: a little tart, a little sweet, and happily compatible with many situations. I welcome the season of the cranberry and look forward to its namesake sauce, Christmas cookies (like this), maybe this cake with butter sauce for a dinner party, and some of these sugared cranberries on a cheese platter next weekend. (Maybe you’d like sweet and salty granola with cranberries — or this cranberry waldorf salad). I think we can all agree this ruby-red fruit adds just the right zing to lots of things, but have you ever thought about how something so delightful comes from a bog? A bog. That conjures images of ogres and mud and maybe slithery things, no? This article from Travel+Leisure takes you on a virtual walk (wade?) through a cranberry bog — no slithery things in sight. The berries take 16 months to grow, and the farmers of Ocean Spray (a collective of 700 farms) harvest about 200 billion berries every season. Still curious? How Stuff Works explains how cranberry bogs work. This lively video is a love letter to cranberries’ awesomeness — and this video spends more time with the Ocean Spray farmers.

• Gilmore Girls Fall Not Your Thing? Try Agatha Christie Autumn. ‘There’s something about these stories that are deeply autumnal to me, even when they’re set on tropical holidays, as they so often are (Poirot loves a vacation). I think they make me feel like a child again, wrapped up under a blanket on the couch next to my mom, eating the popcorn my dad made for us, with extra melted butter.’

• Sort of related… From Page To Screen: New Adaptations Of Popular Mystery Novels. Adaptations are coming from some of the best mystery and thriller authors, including Ruth Ware, Riley Sager, Alice Feeney, and — the one I’m most excited to see — Lucy Foley’s The Guest List. (Here’s my writeup of the book.)

• Um, did you know you can see the words that were coined during each year?! When I entered this mortal plane in 1968, new words in the dictionary were tough love and touchy-feely, trippy, radicchio, art rock, and cash bar.

• Last week on The Library of Lost Time, I talked about the Sandwich Designer of the Year Awards — and then we had a brilliant chat about great sandwiches in our Tuesday Tea discussion. If you also love a good sandwich, here are tips for making better sandwiches from the best sandwich-makers in the US.

• Must-click headline: The Super-Rich and Their Secret Worlds. Explore the (shady) realm of ‘offshore zones, charter cities, and freeports where wealth and power transcend laws and national borders.’

• This is amazing and weird and delightful:

• This new luxury sleeper train — the Britannica Explorer — is dreamy. It’s from Belmond, the company behind the rejuvenated Orient Express; this train will take you through Cornwall, The Lake District, and Wales, ‘a rich tapestry of Gothic moors and slender lakes, otherworldly glens, and shimmering golden fields.’

• You might know Finnish author Tove Jansson from her stories of the Moomins. This article highlights her ethereal, narrative paintings.

• Castles, romance, and madness — finding the intersection of Gothic tropes and Arthurian legend.

• If you’re looking to deepen your relationship with reading, you might want to join this project devoted to becoming a close(r) reader. From now until January, Haley Larsen, the author behind the Closely Reading newsletter, is sharing ‘prompts, literary definitions, recommended readings, inspiration, and other fun goodies’ to guide you to your own style of close reading. I’m still thinking about the questions she asked in the first installment designed to unlock our current beliefs about reading.

• This is great news! The Artful Dodger season 2 is coming. The first season was so much fun (with lots of action and heart).

• In other TV news: We really enjoyed season 1 of the mystery show Elspeth and have just started watching season 2. Writer and friend-of-SSoP Elizabeth Held delves into what makes the show so cozy.

• This story about the restoration of a 13th-century palazzo in Venice reads like a thriller. And the photos? Glorious.

• I love Scotland and shawarma, so this is pretty enticing: The Wrap Game: How Shawarma Ate Glasgow. It’s an excellent story about immigration and good food. Plus, this thing is packed with great sentences. Exhibit A: ‘What marks out shawarma from other portable meat modalities is that it is built on a rotating spit made from whole pieces of marinated meat, normally lamb or chicken, with spices varying according to which part of the Levant the chef hails from.’ It also includes the subhead’ Shawarmarama drama.’ (Note: You don’t have to register to read the article; just click ‘continue to site.’)

• Do you want to read an excerpt from Haruki Murakami’s new book The City and Its Uncertain Walls?

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 three books: Strange Beasts by Susan J. Morris, The Starlets by Lee Kelly & Jennifer Thorne, and Darkly by Marisha Pessl. Then Dave makes the case for playing cozy games. [transcript]

Links

• Strange Beasts by Susan J. Morris

• The Starlets by Kelly Lee and Jennifer Thorne

• Diavola by Jennifer Thorne

• Darkly by Marisha Pessl

• Mel’s review of Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

• Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Distraction of the Week: Cozy Games

• Steam gift cards

• Tiny Glade on Steam

• Video: Tiny Glade Demo #1 and Demo #2

• A Little to the Left on Steam — also available on macOS, Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S.

• Video: A Little to the Left Demo

• Oddada on Steam

• Video: Oddada Demo

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

Wishing you cozy pursuits.

Top image courtesy of Lesly Derksen/Unsplash.