Verona, Library Lock-in, History of Typos, Japan Travel Tips & More: Endnotes 20 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.

Walkable, romantic, and rich in Renaissance history — not to mention the most famous balcony in literature — Verona, Italy, might steal your heart. You can visit Juliet’s House and Museum, listen to beautiful music in the Baroque jewel box Philharmonic Theatre, and time-travel via Roman ruins. Or simply wander the pretty streets to admire the Renaissance architecture — and indulge in delicious food. Here’s our buddy Rick Steve’s on Verona. (The lion above — dating from 1523 — is St. Mark’s lion (Statua del Leone di San Marco), a nod to St. Mark and Venice’s former dominion over the city.)

• A reading category I know you love as much as we do: books about books. (Thank you to friend-of-ssop Betsy for sharing this link.)

• How could I not click on this headline?! The Enduring Chicness of the ‘Too Many Books’ Aesthetic. ‘… book-bare shelves are psychologically disturbing – a genuine phenomenon that affects even non-bibliophiles – and browsing someone else’s shelves can be a quickfire route to a meeting of minds.’

• Maybe you’ll find something for your TBR in this list of 5 crime novels where objects and houses remember. (The thriller Saltwater sounds like The White Lotus set in Capri, and I’m here for that.)

• The Oscar furor has died down, but that doesn’t make these Oscar dresses as book covers any less delightful.

• This is an interesting look at how Thomas Gainsborough’s portraits document the same societal strata as Jane Austen’s novels — through paint instead of words.

• Confirmed! Typos have plagued us for centuries. A new exhibition at Yale Library showcases how typos have bedeviled us for 500 years. ‘What we found was that errata sheets were not only spaces for corrections but also sites of humor, legal maneuvering, and reinterpretation. With this exhibition, we wanted to share ways in which even small corrections can reshape meaning and authority.’

• Handy! 10 Things All Visitors to Japan Should Know. Example: It’s OK to slurp!

• This is an excellent mini-movie!

• Related: Mr. Wickham tells his side of the story.

• This mid-century modern house is so dreamy. In an alternative universe, this is my treehouse, and you are all welcome to visit.

• ‘The simple aesthetics of [the Tudor era] in English interiors – when furniture, fabrics and architecture were hand-made, locally sourced and practical – reveal a lifestyle in contrast to the mass-produced reality of the 21st-Century.’ These homes reveal how Tudors really lived.

• London’s ‘hottest new bookstore’ is owned by Freud’s great-great-grandson. ‘The entrepreneur… is behind Reference Point, a London bookshop specializing in art collections, rare books, cheeky esoterica, and other hard-to-find visual literature.’

• Surely these keys open magical portals!

• Life goal: Get locked in a library overnight.

• Read and discuss this Brontë sisters ranking with your favorite Brontëite. You do have a favorite Brontëite, right? (I definitely have opinions about their number one pick.)

Hope your current read is keeping you turning the pages.

Top image courtesy of Patrick McNamee/Unsplash.