New Podcast — Brazil: Sugarloaf, Samba, and Sao Paulo + Endnotes
Our new show and Mel's favorite book- and travel-related links of the week
Our new episode Brazil: Sugarloaf, Samba, and Sao Paulo is in your podcast player right now!
Here are the touchpoints I had for Brazil before we started our research for this episode:
The Duran Duran song Rio and its legendary video:
The Girl from Ipanema and its sultry rhythm (and somewhat weird delivery):
The samba, mostly from Dancing with the Stars:
And the Barry Manilow classic Copacabana:
(BTW, the song was inspired by a trip to the Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, but it’s a sad story.)
Plus, Carnival of Brazil, the martial arts/dance mashup Capoeira, and the caipirinha cocktail. And oh, yeah… over-the-top dinners at the Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chão.
My overall impression was that Brazil is a party — and I don’t think I was wrong about that.
But as you’ll learn when you listen to our new episode, it’s a lot more. Art and architecture, food and family, beaches and other natural beauty, Brazil is epic by just about every measure.
Visit our show notes to listen to the new episode and explore videos, music, photos, and other tidbits that will take you on a virtual trip to Brazil.
Colorful, sizzling, breathtakingly beautiful, and populated with friendly people (and amazing animals), Brazil is the place for good times, good food, good drinks, and good energy.
We begin with the Amazon, a vast rainforest and river teeming with magical creatures like pink dolphins, bioluminescent mushrooms, and — yes — piranhas and anacondas. (Shout-out to the friendly capybaras!)
Brazil's cities offer something for everyone — the capital city of Brasília's futuristic architecture, Sao Paulo's international food scene, and Rio's seductive combo of city sights and sparkling beaches. (There's a reason we've been singing about the tall and tan, young and lovely girl from Ipanema for decades.)
While you're surely ready to dance the samba and drink a few caipirinhas, did you know Brazil is also the place for award-winning cheese? Or a spring-fed pool that feels like champagne? Or 'chestnuts from Para'?
In this episode, we explore Brazil's rainforest and urban jungles, dig into the fascinating (really!) story of Brazil nuts, and meet one of the world's finest Emperors. Then we recommend five great books that took us there on the page:
a tragi-comic family saga
a literary mystery mixed with magical realism
a gritty Rio crime novel starring a bookish detective
a graphic novel about beginnings and endings
a Gothic-tinged coming-of-age story
Listen on your favorite podcast app or on our website. We hope you enjoy the show!
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Endnotes: 11 October
Oh, to be reading a decidedly Gothic novel in the candlelit library of the Casa Loma in Toronto.
The hilltop castle (Casa Loma is, literally, Hill House in Spanish_ is a Gothic Revival mansion with a fascinating history. It was originally built as a private residence, circa 1903, with an elevator, central vacuum, two secret passages (!), a swimming pool, bowling lanes in the basement, and an oven large enough to cook an ox. In the 1920s, it became a hotel (and liquor-fueled hotspot during American Prohibition); in the ’30s, its reputation for being haunted led to a radio show devoted to its ghosts. During WWII, the stables were used for sonar production and U-boat detection. Now, it’s a fully-restored museum and an excellent place to tuck into a steak at the Blueblood Steakhouse.
The rooms on the main floor of the house read like the cards from a game of Clue: Billiards Room, The Conservatory, Dining Room, Great Hall, Peacock Alley, Sir Henry’s Study, Smoking Room, and The Library.
With its ornamental plasterwork on the ceiling, crystal chandeliers, parquet floors, and glass-lined bookshelves, the library would be a spectacular place to curl up with a book.
You could start with 5 Gothic Novels That Feature Moody Houses and Haunted Heroines, or dig into this list of 43 Gothic Novels with a Strong Sense of Place for more variety. (And our podcast episode that answers the question What is Gothic? is filled with recommendations.) If dark academia calls to you this time of year, here’s a list of 7 Dark Academia Novels that pleasingly combine atmosphere and plot.
You can find more Spooky Season treats on our Destination Pages for Manor House, Halloween, and Secret Passages. Finally, don’t miss this fun video walk-thru of Casa Loma.
The Washington Post shared a list of 10 noteworthy books for October that’s packed with solid recommendations. I’m excited to read The Treasure Hunters Club (strangers, Nova Scotia, treasure hunt), The Stone Witch of Florence (medieval Florence, folk magic), and The Last One at the Wedding (opulent estate, wedding peril). (gift link)
Noted has become one of my favorite Substacks. Each week, English professor Jillian Hess features a remarkable (noted?!) note-taker with photos, quotes, and more about how and why they journaled. In this installment, she shared how none of her readers’ think with notes.’ So many great ideas!
I am 100% here for an Anne Radcliffaissance. The University of Sheffield is on it. ‘Radcliffe — whose writing inspired the likes of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, the Shelleys, Byron, Austen, and Scott — was once a central figure in English literature, read across the world and considered by some critics as better than Shakespeare at creating a sense of terror and suspense.’ (The Guardian weighed in, too, with a fantastic piece on her writing.)
Travel writer and author Evan Rail will be our special guest on an upcoming episode of The Library of Lost Time. His book The Absinthe Forger is out on 24 October. If you’re in the States, you can meet him and hear him talk about it! (Here’s a good radio interview with him as a sneak peek.)
There’s so much colorful design inspiration in this interview with British-Nigerian artist and designer Yinka Ilori.
Yes, please, tell us more about the strange romance of seahorses. ‘My goal at this unsociable hour was to become one of the privileged few humans to ever witness the birth of a pygmy seahorse. Enigmatic, charismatic, and poorly known, these miniature fish had been reluctant to give up their secrets, until now.’
Must-click headline: When Did Witches and Vampires Get So Sexy?
Related: Witches Around the World. ‘The belief in witches is an almost universal feature of human societies. What does it reveal about our deepest fears?’
I always enjoy the What To Read If Substack, and/but this edition about Spooky Season reads is particularly awesome. I want to read all of them!
I read Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a kid, and I’ve never forgotten the details of Pa butchering meat and building a smokehouse. It’s one of those things that’s lodged in my brain forever. If you’ve experienced something similar, you will enjoy this post from Eater about a visit to the Ingalls Homestead in South Dakota. ‘Standing on the Ingalls Homestead is deeply affecting. More than 100 years after the events in Little Town on the Prairie, set in De Smet, it is still easy to envision Laura and her sister Mary playing in the fields while Pa plows. Here, I’m 8 years old all over again, jarred back into a time when seeing the real-deal Ingalls homestead would have been the highlight of my life. I barely resist the urge to emulate the 12-year-old Laura and go chase frogs in the creek.’
News you can use: 10 Places for Pancake-Lovers from Atlas Obscura.
Say ‘Merhaba’ to Giresun, Turkey, the hazelnut capital of the world.
If you listen to our podcasts, you know I’ve been a little obsessed with David Tennant in Macbeth. There’s great news if you can’t get to London! The stage version will be landing on movie theater screens around the world in February.
In other page-to-screen news: The much-maligned Mary from Pride and Prejudice is getting a spinoff story in The Other Bennett Sister.
Did you hear the news about the theme for the Costume Institute’s 2025 exhibit at the Met (the raison d’etre of the Met Gala)? It’s ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,’ and you can read the 1934 essay by Nora Neale Hurston that inspired it.
This was one jam-packed post guys! I especially loved the Rio inferences--Caipirinha is probably my favorite cocktail, love the samba and their churrascarias. Rio is a trip! Love Brazil in general where everything is simply so huge. I've written about it in the past. Will have to revisit those posts. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Can’t wait to listen to the episode. My husband was born & raised in Rio de Janeiro. His family is still there and I’ve visited at least a dozen times. However, due to the omnipresent danger (more than street crime), we haven’t been to Brazil since 2017. It’s just too dangerous to be able to relax & enjoy the beauty of the country.