Corsica, Diary Prompts, Ode to Dew, Rare Books Tour, Vintage Maps & More: Endnotes 08 May

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.

Tempted by the idea of an escape to a Mediterranean island? Consider Corsica. That cliff-top village above is Bonifacio, on the southern tip of the island. You can admire it from a boat bobbing in the sea, or get up close and personal by climbing the Escalier du Roi d’Aragon (King of Aragon’s Staircase), a 189-step coastal trail carved into the limestone cliff at a heart-pounding 45-degree angle. (Video here.) More chill Corsican activities include relaxing on the beach, strolling through charming villages that seem frozen in time, and dining at fermes auberges (farmhouse inns) for Corsican wine, local cheeses, wild boar stew, veal with olives, local seafood, and pulenda, a traditional bread made from chestnut flour. This article from National Geographic will make you yearn to listen to the ‘perfect harmony’ of the local singers and eat ‘ribbons of pancetta shaved so fine I could read the newspaper through them.’ The New York Times is equally lyrical about this less-visited French island. For more on Corsican history and culture, enjoy this video documentary — and to get a sense of Corsica on the page, I recommend Daniel Silva’s excellent thriller The English Girl.

• My self-education re: Shakespeare continues. Won’t you join me? Every single Shakespeare play, ranked — and a quiz: How well do you know the geography of Shakespeare’s plays? I got 8/12.

• In a Substack discussion a few weeks ago about aspects of fiction we love, quite a few people mentioned linked short stories. Here are three crime short story collections with interlinked narratives. ‘Imagine, then, the power of a chain of [short stories] — a group of impactful stories, each fully self-contained but contributing to a larger story connecting them all.’

• Did this essay about the golden age of Gothic romance inspire me to pick up Victoria Holt’s 1960 novel Mistress of Mellyn? Maybe.

• Sort of related: A Literary-Inspired Tour of Brontë Country. ‘As I climbed into the four-poster bed of my regency-styled bedroom, I had to remind myself this was real. Tonight, I was sleeping in a room where members of the Brontë family had slept some 200 years ago, in the building where Charlotte, Emily, and Anne — the literary sisters who gave the world Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall respectively — were born.’

• BRB, feel like I need to escape to a brightly colored, super cozy wagon. (Caravans like these always make me think of this poem.)

• Also colorful: these massive nature murals. ‘…large-scale murals take a playful tack when it comes to portraying animals, often merging them with other objects such as instant photos or, most recently, a plastic punch-out toy. Souvenir, completed this year in Vienna, combines motifs of a large bear with other Arctic components, such as icebergs, a seabird, and a steamship.’

• Neat! Send a letter to your future self with Future Me. You can choose the timeframe and read public letters written by others.

• Speaking of writing: 9 Things to Write in A Pocket Notebook Every Day. ‘Life is made up of the choices you make every day. We must value the present moment and live deliberately. The best way I have found to do that is by writing in a pocket notebook.’

• 10 More ‘Boring’ Classics That Are Actually Unhinged: part 4, part 5, and part 6… for when you like your classics with a side of sass (compliment).

• This painting — ‘Our First Tiff’ by Robert Walker Macbeth — is so charming.

• Music can be time travel, like these in-store playlists from the Gap. The story of the playlist logistics is really interesting, and the music is nostalgia-fueled joy. ‘I began working at the Gap at Highland Park Village in Dallas on October 17, 1992. Immediately, I was overwhelmed by the music played in the store during business hours. At the time, my main musical passions were the songs of Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush, as well as dance music played in clubs. Gap exposed me to a wide array of music such as House, Techno, Alternative Rock, Modern and Classic R&B, Acid Jazz, and so much more. From that very first day, I was captivated by all of this new music….’

• A reminder to pause and pay attention to the small details — Divine Tears, Fairy Footsteps or the Sweat of Heavens: The Delight of Dew. (And here’s the poem ‘Dewdrops’ by John Clare, referenced in the essay.

• This peek behind the scenes of the Rare Book Department at the Free Library of Philadelphia looks like so much fun!

• The Spaces asks, Why are vintage maps the most popular artworks in the room? ‘Early publishers pioneered colour printing with wood blocks and copper plates, though the register often went awry. In the 19th century, mapmakers would have their servants, often women and girls, apply watercolours through hand-cut stencils. Some 20th-century dealers were known to glamourise black and white artefacts by colourising them.’ Pssst… the photos are dreamy.

• The new Harper Collins American Classics are very pretty!

• New books for May 2026: hot picks for sci-fi and fantasy — plus the best new mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels.

May you enjoy your sunset, wherever you are.

Top image courtesy of Hendrik Cornelissen/Unsplash.