Endnotes 27 March: Easter Eggs, Foxe and Boxe, Castle Getaways, Reading Nooks & More

My favorite reading- and travel-related links of the week

[photo: Tim Mossholder/Unsplash]

Hello, friends!

Easter is next weekend, which might mean you’re preoccupied with chocolate bunnies, hard-boiled eggs, special church services, egg hunts, hot cross buns, or all of that and more.

If your thoughts are turning to Easter eggs, we’ve got you covered!

The colorful egg-shaped pieces of art above are Ukrainian Easter eggs (pysanky), made by drawing designs in wax, then coloring the eggs. Here’s a lovely video about the deeper meaning of these beautiful creations:

And here’s another video from 1975 that weirdly has the vibe of a folk horror movie (?!):

If you’d like to give it a go, here are step-by-step instructions, and a video that makes it seem pretty do-able (if you bring some patience to the table).

Would it surprise you to know that Martha Stewart has
51 ideas for decorating Easter eggs? (I remember back in the ‘90s, someone said, ‘Martha Stewart is Martha Stewart so you don’t have to be.’ Yes to that.)

Between us friends, I’m more interested in eating hard-boiled eggs than decorating them; here are my tips for perfectly peelable hard-boiled eggs. Serious Eats’ shared its best egg salad recipe. I like to keep mine very simple: eggs, homemade mayo, salt, pepper, chives… maybe a tiny bit of Dijon mustard.

Maybe you’d prefer something more international. Here are 11 Easter recipes from around the world and a CNN report on how different countries celebrate the holiday with food.

Finally, perhaps the news you can most use: the best and worst Easter candy, ranked. (This week, I’ve replaced my after-dinner square of 90% dark chocolate with a Lindt mini egg. Ridiculously delicious.)

P.S.

I just finished reading the excellent novel Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy. It’s a suspenseful story that combines multiple genres — environmental novel, love story, murder mystery — with gorgeous sentence-level writing. (The Scottish Highland setting is lovingly rendered.) In it, the protagonist Inti recalls reading the book Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours as a child and routinely uses its color descriptions to make sense of her world. That book is real — and you can read about it here and here. ‘Without an image for reference, the book provided immense handwritten detail describing where each specific shade could be found on an animal, plant, or mineral. Prussian Blue for instance could be located in the beauty spot of a mallard’s wing, on the stamina of a bluish-purple anemone, or in a piece of blue copper ore.’ You can flip through the book on Internet Archive. (Also, you should probably read Once There Were Wolves; it was great.)

Endnotes: 27 March

Warning: This is my favorite link of the week, but prepare to spend far too much time enjoying this whimsical story. A gentleman named Franklin Habit bought a rather dilapidated dollhouse, which he then renovated and populated with a cast of (toy) characters, including Mr Josaphat Foxe and Mr Frederick Boxe (a country fox and city hound), Enid Poole (housemaid), Fiammetta Borghese-Buonocore (noted courtesan and… rat), and many more. Enjoy their story here — click the left arrow to read the pages in order.

One-hundred percent yes to this: Tips to create the perfect reading nook. ‘While few of us can accommodate a separate library or reading room, nearly everyone has a spare corner, alcove, landing, or window that is ripe for transformation.’

‘Bitch is a linguistic chameleon: there are good bitches and bad bitches; boss bitches and perfect bitches; sexy, difficult, dangerous or even psycho bitches. After so many variations and attempts to reject or reclaim the word, some now wear the label defiantly, while others still have it thrown at them. Its evolution is messy, complicated and revealing.’ Bitch: A History.

These vintage sci-fi/fantasy covers of Fantastic Novels magazine are colorful works of art.

I’ll take all of the ceramic figurines that look like space creatures, please. All of the artists in London’s ‘Ceramic Odyssey 2126’ exhibit use what’s described as ‘bio-futurist thinking’ to ‘explore how ceramics might evolve in an imagined future where ecological, technological, and biological systems have been radically transformed.’ Mostly, I think they’re super cute.

Go, little possum! Possum Found in Hobart Airport Gift Shop Soft Toy Section. This story includes an adorable video and a happy ending. 5 stars.

Although I’m firmly on #teampickle, I must draw the line at this collection of words that does not belong together: novelty outerwear arms race KFC pickle puffer jacket.

I do not want to visit any of these ‘most terrifying islands in the world’but will happily read the book inspired by them.

As we realized with our podcast episode Tango to the End of the World, Argentina is a pretty fantastic place. Exhibit A: La Noche de las Librerías. For one night in March, bookstores stay open late to celebrate the reading life with author chats, live music, panel discussions, bookbinding workshops, and, of course, lots of book talk.

I can’t improve on this headline: Do you ever walk into a hotel room and feel like it’s missing something — like a banqueting hall and torture chamber? (A list of 10 castles in the UK, with unique amenities, where you can stay over night.)

Continuing the theme of visiting unusual places, here are 57 (!) stunning, surprising, or hidden filming locations.

Seven Novels With Astronaut Protagonists. For more recommended outer space stories, here’s our podcast episode Outer Space: We Are All Made of Stars.

This is a wonderful essay about becoming a reader, family dinners, and the power of talking about books.

Famous Writers’ Houses You Can Visit in the UK and Beyond. The usual British writers are all there, but do not sleep on Edith Wharton’s beautiful estate in Lenox, Massachusetts!

I found the opening thesis of this article preposterous (‘… being interested in fashion means being curious about the current moment…. Fashion writers like me are basically current-affairs journalists in disguise.’) — but I do enjoy the ‘vintage pannier skirts and romantic frills taking over the runways.’

Wishing you a colorful week.