Portico Library, Githerments, Deep Reading, Vintage Postcards & More: Endnotes 13 March

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.

That inviting reading room above is in the Portico Library, a neoclassical mecca for bibliophiles, in Manchester, a UNESCO City of Literature. The library opened in 1806 as a gentleman’s lending library. Its collection includes 25,000 books, mostly Victorian-era biographies, travel literature, and historical works. But it’s lauded for its collection of first editions: Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and North and _South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote her groundbreaking novel at a villa across town (now a lovely museum). The Portico regularly hosts excellent bookish events, and there’s a charming café for a tea-and-cake break. This video gives you a really nice look around, and Atlas Obscura has more details. Beautiful as it is, the Portico isn’t the only historical library in town! Manchester also boasts three other breathtaking libraries: Chetham’s Library, the first public library in England, keeping readers in good books since 1653; the Manchester Central Library with a Shakespeare Hall lined with large stained glass windows depicting scenes from the bard’s plays; and John Rylands Institute and Library, a neo-Gothic pile that’s straight out of dark academia — all open to the public for a look around their stacks.

• I could not love the word githerments (a collection of curiosities) more, and this post about Edward Gorey’s githerments is a delightful read.

• Headline that I couldn’t resist clicking: In This House We Believe in Goblins, Gondal, Björk, and Hildegard of Bingen. The band Mt Flog on making their new album Every Stone Is Green. ‘My friend actually asked me recently which Brontë sister each member of Mt Fog is. I was like, We’re not the sisters, we’re actually long-lost characters from the Brontë sisters’ imagined world of Gondal.’

• I’ve been wanting to read the new book The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski for weeks now. The Guardian calls it ‘a delicious comfort read… A decaying gothic mansion tells the story of the family who once lived there, in this pitch-perfect debut of disappearances, betrayal, and despair.’

• Keeping the fantasy vibes going, here are The Best Fairy Books for Adults, recommended by author Jo Walton.

• There are tremendously helpful ideas in this NPR chat about deep reading. ‘If you want to remember something you read, like a quote or an idea or even a feeling about a scene or character, write it down.’

• Related, from LitHub: What We Lose When We Gamify Reading.

• Well, this is really nice. In Japan, tens of thousands of women (in tidy blue suits and matching hats) deliver probiotic milk directly to people’s homes. Meet the Yakult Ladies. ‘In a country grappling with a rapidly ageing population and a deepening loneliness crisis, Yakult Ladies have become an unlikely source of community, helping to reduce the problem of isolation one drop-off at a time.’

• This interview with two costumers is a fascinating peek inside how they work.

• Neato! Action Comics No. 1 and Captain America Comics No. 1, two of the most valuable and historic comics, have recently found a permanent home at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The curator is super psyched!

• Oh, pretty and poignant… an online archive of vintage postcards where you can read the messages on the back. (Found via Caroline Crampton’s excellent Thursday Thirteen newsletter.)

• I refuse to accept this gloom and doom. Decline and Fall: The Rumoured Demise of English Literature. But I do like this: ‘… the complexity of literature can be a draw if taught well. The danger, he says, is reducing the text to some information. It isn’t solely information – it’s teaching us about the complexity of being human. Students are often stunned, he says, by a writer who has found “the most fitting expression possible for a complex and knotty human feeling.

• I recently finished a re-read of Anne Brontë’s novel Agnes Grey and, while noodling around afterward, I found this essay about ‘the sister who got there first.’ — ‘Seen as less passionate than Emily, less accomplished than Charlotte, Anne is often overlooked. But her governess Agnes Grey is a clear model for Jane Eyre.’

• 5 Oscar-Nominated Films That Use Place to Tell Their Stories. Sinners and Frankenstein have such a strong sense of place!

• This is a really cool travel service: You tell Pack Up + Go what you like, pick a budget, and they plan a surprise trip for you.

• 10 Movie Characters Who Look Nothing Like Their Book Counterparts. This is not a problem for me because I don’t care what the book says, I just cast every male character as Viggo Mortensen or Michael Sheen and every female character as Eva Green or Lucy Boynton.

• Busted! An otter and heron were caught on video stealing fish from a boat. Go otter! Go heron!

Hope your weekend reading is stellar.

Top image courtesy of Portico Library.