Red Squirrels, Austen Letters, Big Fall Books, Librarian Movies & More: Endnotes 12 September

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.

In our favorite park Vyšehrad, the chestnut trees are starting to drop their yellow (crunchy) leaves, acorns are beginning to make an appearance, and the red squirrels are doing parkour in the tree branches — all happily received signs that autumn is well on its way. Here in the Czech Republic, our fuzzy friends are Eurasian Red Squirrels, immediately identifiable by the tufts on their ears that look like little devil horns. American friends, you also have red squirrels! They’re the American Red Squirrel, known for their chattering vocalizations and being a little feisty — maybe because they don’t have the groovy tuft-horns of their European cousins. Fun fact: In Norse mythology, Ratatoskr is a red squirrel who runs up and down Yggdrasil (the world tree), spreading gossip between the eagles perched on top and the serpent Nidhogg who lives at the roots. More red squirrel facts. Finally, for your moment of zen, here’s a short, sweet video of a red squirrel caught on a bird cam here in the Czech Republic.

• This is a fun article about the new Tiny Bookshop game. Booksellers say the experience of running this sweet, pretend bookshop is legit. (Dave has been playing and loving it!)

• The Brontë Women’s Writing Festival is September 26 to 28 in Haworth in venues around the Brontë Parsonage. Find all the details and a reading list right here. If you can’t make it in person, you can enjoy the panels online. Info on digital tickets here. Emerald Fennell — she of the new controversial Wuthering Heights adaptation — is kicking off the festivities.

• News you can use: The Best Period Dramas to Stream Now. (We watched A Thousand Blows and The Pursuit of Love; enjoyed both!)

• I’m more of a postcard collector than sender, but I enjoyed reading the answer to the question, When Did People Start Sending Postcards From Vacation?

• These illustrations of Japanese candies from the 17th century are so sweet!

• Season Four of The White Lotus will be set in France. Vogue theorizes about four places where the drama might unfold.’[W]e do know that it will likely be filmed at a Four Seasons hotel… For us prestige TV sleuths, that narrows it down quite a bit: there are only three Four Seasons located in the European country.’

• The landscape paintings by 19th-century Norwegian artist Anders Askevold are quite romantic (and Romantic). Want more? Here’s a video of 73 of his works.

• From Kirkus, 20 Books for Serious Foodies.

• Is it even Friday if I don’t share some fun links about Jane Austen?! This is a great essay about what money really means in her novels — ‘Talk of money in Austen is always dramatic, never just informative.’ — and Town & Country shares news about an auction of three letters from Jane to her sister Cassandra. ‘Leading the sale is a letter written to her sister Cassandra in 1805, detailing the social life of Bath that later informed Persuasion… For some Austenites, what might be most intriguing about this letter is not necessarily the contents of the letter, but the recipient… much to the chagrin of some historians and fans, Cassandra burned many of Jane’s letters after the author’s death, for reasons still unknown.’

• Somewhat related: CrimeReads recommends cozy mysteries set in the city of Bath. ‘Georgian-era Bath is a very cozy crime kinda city. It’s well-heeled, full of tea shops and cake dispensaries of various types. The people are gentle and polite, the furthest thing from murderers and serial killers you could imagine… For Jane Austen, it was an escape from the social whirl of London to the social whirl of Bath. It’s hard to imagine a gritty noir set in Bath amid the tweeds and Land Rovers, the welly boots and the homemade Victoria sponge. It’s solid cozy country.’

• 100% yes to this: 8 Iconic Movies That Celebrate Libraries and Librarians. (We watched Desk Set from 1957 a few Christmases ago, and it’s very charming.)

• Also charming: these photos of author Dodie Smith (101 Dalmatians, I Capture the Castle) in her London flat in the 1930s.

• Oooh, The Guardian weighs in on their picks for biggest books of the fall.

New Episode of Strong Sense of Place — Baseball Diamond: Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

There’s nothing else quite like a night at the ballpark, especially when the light and temperature hit just right. The air is soft, the crowd is genial. You’ve got a hot dog in one hand and an icy-cold drink in the other. Your only job? Sit there, take in the action, and occasionally join in a cheer or shout at the ump.

Since the 1860s, baseball has been called ‘America’s pastime.’ During times of strife — the Civil War, the Great Depression, the world wars — baseball provided escapism and a sense of normalcy. It’s always been seen as a reflection of American attitudes and values: Baseball requires cooperation and self-sacrifice — and like America, baseball LOVES a maverick. Baseball is also democratic: Just about anybody can play just about anywhere if they’ve got an open space, a bat, and a ball. As a spectator, even if you don’t know all the rules, you can still understand the elation of a stolen base or a home run.

In this episode, we take a virtual tour of some of the remarkable ballparks around the US, meet the most eccentric man in baseball, delight in players’ excellent nicknames, and wax poetic about popcorn. Then we recommend great books that took us inside the stadium on the page, including a sweetly funny epistolary novel that sneaks up on you, a love letter to the unsung catcher, a 1920s mystery starring the Cincinnati Reds, a closer look at pitching, and a literary mashup of campus novel, baseball story, and rom-com.

Get the show notes and transcript.

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

Swing for the fences, friends.

Top image courtesy of Getty Images/Unsplash+.