Endnotes: Strawberry Season, Sicily, Sci-Fi Romance, Bridgerton Sets
Every Friday, we celebrate the weekend with Mel's favorite book- and travel-related links of the week. Let's go!
We're just one week away from the launch of Season 6 of our Strong Sense of Place podcast (YAY!) — and we have lots of news to share today.
New mini-episode today: Our Top 10 Books of the First Five Seasons
Before we get into our new season, we thought we'd take a look back at the books that have really stayed with us from our first five seasons. In a podcast that dropped today, we shared the rules for how we chose and revealed our top reads. May I just say that putting my picks in countdown order was an odious task? I love all my favorites equally! Listen on our blog or your favorite podcast app.
1 million downloads
Since we launched this project in 2020, we've produced 56 episodes of Strong Sense of Place and 101 episodes of The Library of Lost Time. That means we've introduced you to somewhere between 500 and 700 books we love. Thank you for sharing our enthusiasm for books and travel — we're so grateful to have you join us.
It's strawberry season here in Prague — all the fruit stands and markets smell like strawberries. A few months ago, I made a vow to Dave after we watched this video about sandwiches from around the world: I promised that we could make a Japanese-style strawberry-and-whipped-cream sandwich. It should be on Japanese milk bread, but I couldn't find it, so we used your basic, squishy, slightly sweet sandwich bread — and I was too lazy to make homemade whipped cream, so we used the kind from the can. You know what? It was still delicious. It was sort of a low-rent, low-effort strawberry shortcake. Here's a good blog post with a recipe if you want to try it.
Did you know that strawberries have more Vitamin C than citrus fruit? Madame Tallien did! According to legend, back in the 18th century, the glamorous Thérésa Cabarrus — a.k.a, Madame Tallien, a.k.a. Princess of Chimay, a.k.a, the It Girl of the French Revolution — took leisurely soaks in a bath filled with strawberry juice because of the fruit's healing powers. It took 22 pounds (10 kg) of fruit to fill her basin.
I have questions. Do you think she ate strawberry shortcake whilst soaking in strawberry juice? Or was ever tempted to bring a bottle of rum and some ice into the tub to make a spontaneous strawberry daiquiri? (Spontaneous Strawberry Daquiri, the name of my new pop-punk band.)
Definitely treat yourself to this roundup of factoids about the 'It Girl' of the French Revolution. She led a life of intrigue, scandal, and adventure. And, apparently, strawberries.
Endnotes: 17 May
Prepare to swoon: The new season of Bridgerton started yesterday on Netflix. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes peek at the sets — or book a getaway to a Georgian-mansion-turned hotel to live like Penelope Featherington.
The Modern Mrs. Darcy Summer Reading Guide is out! Anne Bogel’s book picks are always top-notch — everything you need to know about the Guide is right here.
If you’re anywhere near North Carolina, you might want to get tickets for the Theatre Raleigh production of Jane Eyre: The Musical, starring Broadway performers Julie Benko and Matt Bogart.
Sicily sold homes for one euro. This is what happened next. The first three paragraphs of this article are chef’s kiss.
Mystery solved! This Is Why Flight Attendants Sit on Their Hands During Takeoff.
This is fun: The Booker Prize teamed up with The Notting Hill Bookshop (yes, that one!) to put a spotlight on fiction in translation. (Here’s my list of 27 great books in translation.)
Based on this clip, I feel like Sarah Jessica Parker would enjoy our podcast?
If you’re trying to learn a foreign language, here are helpful tips for becoming an amateur polyglot.
These sculptures based on doodles are a delight to see — and their story is quite poignant. ‘When visiting his hometown of Runik, Kosovo, back in 2010, Petrit Halilaj realized that his elementary school was being demolished. He went to the site—which had miraculously survived the Yugoslav wars that spurred his family to flee to an Albanian refugee camp in 1998—and found a pile of desks, many with doodles and notes scratched into their surfaces. These etchings have now found their way to New York, where they’re perched atop The Met’s rooftop garden…’ Here’s a video interview with the artist.
Treat yourself to this gallery of finalists for the Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year.
I’m a superfan of Natasha Pulley’s novels (The Bedlam Stacks, The Kingdoms, The Half Life of Valery K), so I’m inclined to trust her recommendations for the 5 best sci-fi romance novels.
This marriage of classic novels and rich paint colors is pretty cool.
I keep crossing paths with articles about the novel The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. It sounds great! Esquire weighs in on why we love time-travel fiction — and here’s the author explaining why writing her book was so much fun.
The Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, recently showed an exhibit called Holbein and the Renaissance of the North. There’s an excellent interactive piece online exploring paintings and other objects from 16th-century Europe.
Tangentially related: Last week, I mentioned t-shirts emblazoned with women authors’ names. I noticed that Hilary Mantel was missing from the store, so I wrote them and asked them to consider adding her. It worked! You can now get a t-shirt or sweatshirt to shout-out Dame Hilary.
New Mini-Pod Episode: Top 10 Books from our First Five Seasons
Since we launched Strong Sense of Place in 2020, we’ve produced five seasons — 56 episodes — of the show. We’ve also shared our love for books through 101 episodes of The Library of Lost Time podcast — and we’ve introduced to 500 books we love.
Thanks to you, we’ve had over one million downloads (!) and, the best part of all, we feel like we’re part of a massive book club filled with the best people. Thank you for that!
In this mini-episode, we each looked back through our book recommendations to find our top 10 titles from the first five seasons of the show. Maybe you’ll find your new favorites, too!
Stuff We Mentioned
Dave’s Top 10
10: The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra (episode: Russia)
9: An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (episode: Pennsylvania)
8: The Ladies in Waiting by Santiago Garcia and Javier Olivares(episode: Spain)
7: Turkey and the Wolf by Mason Hereford and J.J. Goode (episode: New Orleans)
6: Elephant Complex by John Gimlette (episode: Sri Lanka)
5: The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel (episode: Maine)
4: Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright (episode: Thailand)
3: The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float by Farley Mowat (episode: Atlantic Canada)
2: Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris (episode: Italy)
1: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (episode: Russia)
Mel’s Top 10
10: The Pages by Hugo Hamilton (Patreon Zoom book chat)
9: The Last Watchman of Old Cairo by Michael David Lukas (episode: Egypt)
8: This is Paradise by Kristiana Kahakauwila (episode: Hawaii)
7: The Last Cruise by Kate Christensen (episode: The Sea)
6: Circe by Madeline Miller (episode: Greece)
5: 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino (episode: Pennsylvania)
4: Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson (episode: Museums)
3: The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller (episode: Jamaica)
3: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka(episode: Sri Lanka)
2: Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory (episode: Chicago)
1: Still Life by Sarah Winman (episode: Italy)
The endnotes are much easier to navigate on my phone here in Substack.