Christmas Markets, Winter Poems, Frosty Places, Xmas Crime, Cocoa & More: Endnotes 13 December

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 winter wonderland above is the Christmas market in Dresden, Germany. There are a handful of markets throughout the city with a light-up ferris wheel, light-bedecked wooden huts where you can sip warming shots, handicraft booths, and stalls selling gingerbread, stollen, hot chocolate, and Dave’s favorite: freshly fried donut balls dusted with powdered sugar. Dresden says their markets, dating back to the 1400s, are the oldest Christmas markets in Europe — but maybe the tradition started in Vienna in 1296 when Duke Albrecht I commissioned 14-day fairs during December. This Smithsonian article is a lively romp through Christmas market history. Both Forbes and CNN have opinions about the best Christmas markets around the world. Here in Prague, we usually walk through the markets in Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square to admire their extra-large Christmas trees, but the market in Náměstí Míru (Peace Square) is where we meet our friends under the lights for a hot chocolate or spiced wine. Friends in the US, you don’t need to travel across the pond to enjoy festive Christmas markets! Here’s a list of the best Christmas markets in the USA — and Koziar’s Christmas Village, family-owned and operated since 1948 (!), is still going strong in Bernville, PA. A drive through the light displays followed by hot chocolate was part of my family’s Christmas celebrations when I was a kid.

• We had a lively conversation about holiday traditions in our Tuesday Tea chat this week. Click over for lots of cheer!

• These book kits are beautiful and a genius/fun solution to gift-giving dilemmas.

• The Guardian dives into why Japanese fiction is booming. ‘Known in the industry as healing or heartwarming fiction, comfort books often go unreviewed in the press but represent more than half of the bestselling Japanese fiction titles this year. There are recurring motifs: coffee shops (Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold); bookstores and libraries (Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking for Is in the Library); and, most of all, cats (Makoto Shinkai’s She and Her Cat).’

• Would you go to see Anne Boleyn: The Musical? (I would, obvs.)

• Carol Anne Duffy’s Christmas poems capture different facets of the holiday season. Enjoy this reading of ‘Frost Fair’ from inside St. Albans Cathedral:

• More gorgeous poetry: Welsh actor Michael Sheen reads poems from Dylan Thomas, including the ‘lost’ poem ‘A Dream of Winter.’

• Finland, Iceland, Alaska, and more — here are 8 Places Where You Can Visit Santa Claus.

• History Extra drops knowledge bombs: 10 Festive Facts You Might Not Know. (requires free registration)

• Here’s essential intel on the difference between biscuits and scones. Spoiler: The answer is butter.

• Quiz: How well do you know the world’s frozen destinations? (I got 11/14.)

• Prague Airport keeps it cute for Christmas:

• Sort of related: The Weirdest Items Found at TSA Airport Security. (Live eels?!)

• Ooooh, the beautiful Barcelona landmark Casa Battló — designed by Antoni Gaudí — has just gotten a spiffing up that’s made it even more stunning.

• The verse you didn’t know you needed! Holiday. Movie. Haiku.

• AgathaChristie.com asks, Why Do We Read Crime at Christmas? — with answers from book bloggers, podcasters, and Dame Agatha’s great-grandson. And Caroline Crampton from the podcast Shedunnit shares the best classic Christmas mysteries.

• Related: There’s a new full-cast audiobook of Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles starring Peter Dinklage Hercule Poirot (!), along with British acting legend Harriet Walter and Phil Dunster (Jamie on Ted Lasso). The sample sounds so good.

• Whoa! This ‘19th-century Kindle’ is so cool.

• Read along with a holiday classic! Every year around the winter solstice — December 21 — people turn to Susan Cooper’s fantasy novel The Dark is Rising, reading one chapter per day for 12 days. The BBC has a full-cast recording of the book free online, in case you want to listen by the light of candles or a Christmas tree.

• From Wacky to Wonderful, These 7 Hot Chocolates Are Famous for a Reason. BRB, going on a hot chocolate tour around the world.

• These artsy playing cards are lovely and would make an excellent stocking stuffer.

• Cannot resist this headline: Emily Brontë Is This Season’s Style Icon. I think our girl would be flummoxed by this particular arrangement of words.

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: Gifts from the Kitchen by Kristine Kidd and A Christmas Cornucopia: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Yuletide Traditions by Mark Forsyth. Then Dave recommends entertaining, accessible graphic novels for newbies. [transcript]

Links

• Buy: Gifts from the Kitchen by Kristine Kidd

• Internet Archive: Gifts from the Kitchen by Kristine Kidd

• A Christmas Cornucopia: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Yuletide Traditions by Mark Forsyth

• Polar Vortex: A Family Memoir by Denise Dorrance

• Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day by Dan Nott

• The Way Things Work by David Macaulay

• How It All Ends by Emma Hunsinger

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

Wishing you all things merry and bright.

Top image courtesy of sontung57/Pixabay.