Endnotes: Saigon Street Food, Marginalia, Layover Trips, Beatrix Potter
Every Friday, we celebrate the weekend — and the reading, relaxing, and daydreaming time ahead — with Mel's favorite book- and travel-related links of the week. Let's go!
Dave and I are just back from Berlin. We bought used books, eyeballed incredible Egyptian relics at the Neues Museum, and ate super-tasty Saigon street food at the restaurant Đistrict Một. The photo above gives you a little peek at the colorful interior—it's all candy colors, plants, and neon signs. The food is stunningly delicious and all about the contrasts: spicy-sweet, crunchy-creamy, hot-cold. And messy! Everything was delightfully messy. Bonus: We tried a new-to-us appetizer!
You might recall that we talked about the YouTube food videos made by Beryl Shereshewsky on this episode of The Library of Lost Time. In her show about pork floss, she tried Vietnamese pizza. It's made on a crispy piece of rice paper and topped with processed cheese and pork floss. We were very curious about how that might taste IRL, and we were delighted to find it on the menu at Đistrict Một. It's very savory with lots of umami, and the rice paper is pleasantly crunchy. We also had a neon-pink rice bun stuffed with pork and veggies and fall-off-the-bone ribs with perfect char marks (and flavor). (This is my reminder that if you haven't watched Beryl's videos yet, this weekend would be a good time to remedy that oversight.)
Snaps from our very memorable lunch:
As you know from listening to our podcast episode about Vietnam, we haven't been there (yet), but for about 90 minutes, it felt like we could be sitting in a street café in Saigon, and that was pretty cool.
Then when we left, we saw this, which... I mean. The sky and the sun and the tower. What a day!
In other news... since the beginning of the year, I've had the intention to do yoga every day. (Thanks, Yoga with Adriene!) I've done well with my habit: I've missed only a few days when we've been traveling, although I always do a 5-minute meditation before going to sleep, so that counts for something.
This week, I added a new element to my 'get yourself together in the morning' routine and started transcribing the poems I've been hoarding on my computer into my poetry journal.
On Wednesday, the poem I scribbled onto a page in my olive-green Leuchtturm was 'Bulwark: To Jane Eyre' by Veronica Ashenhurst. I love this poem for its call to mutiny against fate and shout-outs to the language of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre: arctic, caged, the yearning for new horizons. I'm practicing reciting it aloud like my poetry muse, Helena Bonham Carter. For what? I don't know! I just want to be able to do it. Maybe I'll even memorize it. Why not?
Bulwark: To Jane Eyre — Veronica Ashenhurts
My walls, brick and plaster, stand pitiless.
So, I covet the far horizon, as did
Rochester’s wife, groaning in her windowless
Third-story room. But my infirm hips
And legs can’t take me anywhere, only
Muddling across the still hall, far from
That turquoise line of beckoning, where sky
And earth embrace. I’m scared the arctic tern
Caged in my ribs will break its wings over
A view it cannot see, while walls close in.
Still, here’s Jane Eyre, hardback. Heroine,
I search your thoughts and fire and self-respect.
I’ll read until the ceiling floats; we will
Mutiny against fate today, and soar.
Endnotes: 12 April 2024
There are some fun ideas in this post about five ways to annotate your books. Heck, yeah, Marginalia!
I haven’t read E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India yet, but this personal essay about reading the classic 100 years after its publication.
How Beatrix Potter Hopped Into Our Hearts. ‘An exhibition at the Morgan Library pays tribute to the illustrator’s prowess as a naturalist, storyteller, mycologist, and sheep farmer.’
Take a bite of this: the rise and fall of the Devon split. ‘Cream runs thick in Devonian blood… the small number of dishes considered to be Devonian often involve dairy, like junket topped with clotted cream, Devonian cream tea, and the Devon (or Devonshire) split: a sweetened bun filled with whipped cream and topped with a dot of strawberry jam…’
Here are 8 places you can turn a layover into a fun part of your trip. ‘When you’re traveling great distances, you often take connecting flights to intriguing destinations without getting a real chance to experience the culture… A few airlines have been working to change that by running stopover programs. These initiatives allow travelers to tack more time on their layover at no extra charge, and sometimes even include a free or discounted hotel stay.’
This Instagram account devoted to Italian bakery papers is eye-popping and makes me hungry for fresh bread.
This is cool: changing fonts and page layouts in books is saving trees.
Remember when Dave talked about the memoir West with the Night in our podcast episode about Kenya? JStor’s got a nice article about Beryl Markham, the ‘warrior of the skies.’
Hey-oh! Here’s an ode to the Prague defenestrations. ‘Throwing people out of windows (or defenestrating them, as the Latin has it) is an act imbued with longstanding political significance in Prague. From the Hussite revolt in the late Middle Ages through the Thirty Years’ War to modern instances… Thom Sliwowski finds a national shibboleth imbued with ritual efficacy.’
From the art magazine Hyperallergic: 12 Graphic Novels to Read This Spring.
This is an amazing piece of writing and confirms all I thought about this new mega cruise ship. Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever.
New UNESCO sites are always cause for celebration, and these 18 new Global Geoparks look amazing. ‘Created in 2015, the UNESCO Global Geopark designation aims to recognise and protect the world’s geological heritage with international significance. The latest countries to receive one or more geoparks in 2024 include Belgium, Brazil, China, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.’
Here’s a fun reading list of 6 mysteries about translators.