Bookish Street Art, Book Club Drama, Travel Love Language, Pad Thai & More: Endnotes 09 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.

Let’s take a romp through some reading-inspired street art! We’ll start with a banger: Here are 45 murals about books, libraries, and reading. One of my favorites from that collection is Curiosity Feeds Imagination by Mantra. It’s on a street in Esch-sur-Alzette, a city in Luxembourg with great examples of street art. In Espona, Spain, a young reader stretches for a book — and in Bree, Belgium, a bicycle tunnel is transformed into an enormous bookshelf. In real life, Charlotte Brontë was just 4’9”, but in this Kilkee Beach mural, she’s (much, much) larger than life. (There are more author murals in this collection.) In Utrecht, Netherlands, a trompe l’oeil bookshelf adorns a brick building — and in Vilnius, Lithuania, an entire street is devoted to literature. Finally, this line of novels published by Penguin UK flips the script: street artists re-imagined the covers of ten contemporary classics.

• Whoa. The stories in this piece from The Guardian about book clubs that got dramatic are intense (and also quite amusing). ‘More than a decade ago, she selected Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh as December’s book since it was set during the Christmas season. But Eileen, which tells the tale of a troubled young woman who becomes obsessed with an older co-worker at the prison where she works, is decidedly not an uplifting holiday season read. “People are mad to this day,” VanDenburgh said. “At the very last meeting, in fact, people brought up Eileen, like: Don’t you dare ever do that to us again.”’

• Eight of the Best Meta Mysteries. For people who love when a mystery knows it’s a mystery.

• At the recent Valentino Spring 2027 runway show, guests were asked to bring their favorite book to be donated to charity after the show. See photos and read about it here and here. It was held in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. Swoon.

• Do you know the phrase ‘ergodic books’? I didn’t until I watched this:

• Your periodic reminder that most people are compassionate and want to make a kinder world: Activists Unveil Quilt Honoring Thousands Disappeared by ICE in Minnesota.

• The 2026 Comedy Wildlife Photography Award Finalists made me LOL so many times. Confession: I love a water buffalo.

• Take a few minutes to escape into a real-life fantasy world with this short piece about Ronda, Spain.

• What’s Your Travel Love Language?

• A delicious little piece on the origins of pad thai. For more, listen to our podcast episode Thailand: Come for the Food, Stay for the Spiritual Enlightenment.

• This is so cool! Explore a 3D paper model of historic Prague.

• Perhaps you need to get lost in some yummy British period dramas.

• Naomi Alderman writes sharp novels with big ideas and lived-in characters. I thoroughly enjoyed this look at her workspace and writing habits.

• The new Gothic graphic novel The Cutting Garden (written by Darcy Van Poelgeest; art by Erin Connally; letters by Aditya Bidikar) looks great. ‘[A] graphic novel set within a New Orleans flower shop, where haunting botanical elements mirror the slow decay of a family line’ illustrated with Erin Connally’s hand-painted watercolor washes and naturalist patterns.

• Aw. Inside Amy Winehouse’s library. A new exhibit collects 400 books that were in the late singer’s personal library. ‘Most of the volumes are out-of-print paperbacks with glossy, candy-bright covers…. There are themes: books about Hollywood (biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Dean Martin, Alfred Hitchcock); about music (Frank Sinatra, Bob Marley, Peggy Lee); about gangsters (Ronnie Kray); and a few literary choices: Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. We will never know whether Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black inspired the title of Winehouse’s multi-platinum album Back to Black. I wonder, too, whether her music was influenced by her apparent love of Vladimir Nabokov, or sudoku. How ever did she find the time?’

• Wow. This is awesome: An enormous pop-up book at the Los Angeles Public Library. It measures 31 by 20 feet when it’s open — and it’s beautiful! (Hugs of thanks to friend-of-SSoP Pam G. for sending this our way.)

Hope you’re reading something great.

Top image courtesy of Hannah Sibayan/Unsplash.