North Wales, Good Marginalia, Literary Adaptations, Ghosts & More: Endnotes 03 October

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.

We’re heading to Wales soon for our Readers’ Weekend at Trevor Hall. The photo above was taken in the Mach Loop, a series of valleys in west-central Wales used as low-level training areas for fast aircraft — like Top Gun for Welshmen! The nearby town of Dolgellau is known for Sesiwn Fawr, a bilingual festival for music, comedy, and literature. The stages are set up at charming pubs around town, including the Royal Ship, the Stag, the Unicorn, and the Torrent. The town is a great jumping off point for hiking, thanks to its location in the southern section of Snowdonia National Park. The National Trust recommends the 10 best walks in Snowdonia. And this video is a lovely stroll through Dolgellau.

• These tips are great! How to Be a Good Literary Citizen (in Seven Easy Steps). ‘…even if it doesn’t always seem apparent from looking at news headlines, there are many, many of us out there: people who care about books and culture and their community in general.’

• Oooh, take a peek at where 12 Booker Prize nominees do their writing.

• This newly discovered collection of Virginia Woolf stories sounds really interesting. ‘A chance discovery at a country house revealed the three funny – sometimes surreal – interlinked tales, written almost a decade before Woolf’s first book was published.’ (This is where I admit I’ve not read any Woolf. Hit the comments and tell why and what I should!)

• A new exhibit at the Kunstmuseum Basel (in Basel, Switzerland) attempts to answer the question, Why are we so obsessed with ghosts? ‘As a culture, we’ve always loved a good ghost. From a white sheet with black holes for eyes that haunts the pages of a children’s story book, to the Romantic and the Gothic, via spirit photography, Ouija boards, and Patrick Swayze, the attraction is undeniable. And why not? The question of where we go when we die, if anywhere, is knitted into the meaning of what it means to be human.’ (More here).

• This open-air theatre on the stone cliffs of Cornwall is pretty magical.

• Have you seen this new hybrid bird between a blue jay and a green jay?

• If you only read one thing today, make it this: Jon Varese — author of The Company, The Spirit Photographer, and friend-of-SSoP — wrote a beautiful essay for The Atlantic that explores grief through Frankenstein and AI.

• M.L. Rio, author of the yummy slice of dark academia If We Were Villains, just released a new book. Here’s her playlist for her new novel Hot Wax.

• Scientific American explains why writing in your books is good for your brain. ‘Famous writers such as Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe are somewhat known for their marginalia, making their biographers both overjoyed and overwhelmed.’ (Thanks to SSoP-friend Elizaebeth for sharing this link!)

• If you (like me) can’t get enough of the discourse around Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights, here’s the compelling inspiration for her movie.

• Related: 15 Beloved Books That Have Multiple Adaptations.

• And also: Per LitHub, the literary film & tv you need to stream in October.

• Speaking of fun adaptations, here’s a guide to the locations (in Manchester, Liverpool, and Yorkshire) used as stand-ins for Dublin in House of Guiness.

• Ripe for discussion! My Literary Fiction Is More Literary Than Yours. ‘I want to try to untangle what we mean when we talk about literary fiction, because wow is it a mess out there.’

Welsh phrase of the day: Ble mae’r llyfrgell? (Where is the library?)

Top image courtesy of Joseph Reeder/Unsplash.