Kyrgyzstan, Graphic Novels, Bayeux Tapestry, Love Letter Plots & More: Endnotes 31 July

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.

When a friend of mine here in Prague shared that she was going to Kyrgyzstan, my first thought was, Wow! So cool! and my second was, Wait! Do I know where that is?! The answer to the latter was, Only kinda. Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country snuggled between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and China. Although the surrounding mountains isolate the country, it was part of the Silk Road from the 2nd century BCE until the 14th century. The terrain and its tradition for horse-riding nomadism might lead you to think the Kyrgyz people are Mongolian. But the Kyrgyz have a distinct language (Kyrgyz) and culture. (Treat yourself to this surprisingly cute video of English-Arabic-Kyrgyz translations of common words.) The Epic of Manas, an epic poem that documents the history of the region, is included on the list of UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. But my pal is more of an Action Jackson kind of girl, so her plans included hiking, sleeping in a boz ui (yurt), and a horseback riding adventure in the mountains. If you’re curious, here’s a helpful ‘get started’ guide to the country and more practical tips. This year’s World Nomad Games will be held in Kyrgyzstan in late August and early September — a 6-day event with athletes competing in horseback archery, hunting with falcons, and buzkashi (a game played on horseback using a goat carcass as a ball). And KOLFest of music and art was just held this week at Lake Issyk Kul — a high-altitude Alpine lake that is the eighth-deepest in the world, the eleventh-largest in the world by volume, and the second-largest saline lake. The photo above was taken at the Oimo Tash Yurt Camp located on the southern shore of the lake.

• How Owning Books Became Everybody’s Business. ‘The question of when having a lot of books becomes having too many books is subjective, but that’s never kept anyone from asking. (Nor has it kept them from saying There’s no way you’ve read all of those like it’s some big gotcha.)’

• So many of these look like a lot of fun! LGBTQIA+ Crime Fiction To Check Out This Summer. Definitely interested in this setup from The Tuxedo Society by Paul Rudnick: ‘A dinner invitation turns into a job offer: join the Tuxedo Society, a gay secret society working inside the U.S. government.’

• Or perhaps you’re in the mood for graphic novels or graphic nonfiction. I got you! Graphic Novels for Serious Fiction Lovers and Graphic ‘Novels’ Are Perfect for a Nonfiction Fix. Can wholeheartedly endorse Charity and Sylvia by Tillie Walden; The Two Saddest Kitchens by Roz Chast & Jason Adam Katzenstein also sounds fun: ‘the pair gather to kvetch about kitchens — everything from janky fridges and mismatched Tupperware to sinks piled with Precambrian dishes.’

• Since it seems to be the summer of Greek mythology, I’d like to recommend two engaging retellings: Hell or High Water by Andrew Rubin, which sets the myth of Hermes and Persephone in today’s world with plenty of cheek and smarts. I was hooked from the first page. And Circe by Madeline Miller. I was expecting a ‘homework’ book and instead was taken on a thrill ride with feelings. It’s one of those books I wanted to flip over and start again as soon as I finished it. (The audiobook is divine.)

• I think you’ll like the unofficial rules of being a book person!

• If you only read one thing this week, choose this one. This essay about home as a place and a process gave me many feels (in a good way). ‘Home is… built out of ten thousand unthinking movements - the hip-movement that closes the drawer, the pressure the back door needs, the number of stairs your feet know without counting.’

• For a completely different strong sense of home: Life Inside Icelandic Turf Houses.

• This is so cool: A free, interactive map of the world’s great castles, fortresses, and palaces! It includes 5,793 landmarks in 138 countries with a photo and story — and no ads (nor does it require you to set up an account). For funsies, you can click ‘Surprise Me’ and learn about a new-to-you castle! Visit the Castlemap Atlas.

• Meet Italy’s traveling booksellers. ‘The first itinerant sellers, either barsan or booksellers, would load their merchandise into wicker baskets they carried on their backs. Then they began using hand carts, then carts pulled by horses, then motorized carts when the roads became drivable. On farmsteads down in the bassa (lowlands) along the Po River, the peasants who felt tied to fieldwork like their oxen yoked to their plows were fascinated by these peculiar folk who came from over the mountains and seemed free to choose their own destinies.’

• For the first time since it was made almost 1000 years ago, the Bayeux Tapestry is in the UK, at the British Museum (instead of its home in its namesake museum in Normandy, France). The BBC has five key scenes from the Tapestry and the stories they tell.

• Useful! How to Read a Big Victorian Novel Without Losing the Plot, the Names, or Your Will to Live. ‘A five-part survival system for finishing Bleak House, Middlemarch, The Woman in White, and anything else that has been defeating you.’

• If you love a plot that turns on a letter like I love a plot that turns on a letter, then you will love this. To Whom It May Concern: The Letter as a Plot Device.

• Any book read on the beach is a beach read, and/but there is a fun history behind the origins of the beach read. ‘… while critics worried about the dangers of novel reading among young women, magazine covers and publishers’ advertisements increasingly featured young women in white muslin relaxing beneath a shady tree or fashionably dressed at the beachside with books in hand.’

• Related: Town & Country recommends the best summer beach reads of all time and The Guardian shares the perfect books for the beach, picked by Freida McFadden, Mick Herron, Robert Harris, and more.

Jakshy barynyz!

(Said as a friend departs, it means ‘go well’ in Kyrgyz.)

Top image courtesy of Rinat T/Unsplash.