Something For the Weekend
A few selections from the weird, wonderful, good and bad for the week ending July 11, 2025.
Welcome to another edition of Something For the Weekend, a bite-sized miscellany featuring some pleasurable things that found me this week.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Benj
A friend sent me a link from The Marginalian a couple of years ago, and I have been, to use Popova’s words, donating and loving ever since. In the algorithmic dross that is most of the social web, this generous, magnificent effort is a reminder of how kind and interesting the internet can be. Barely a week goes by that I do not find a gem or two to cherish. Loved this post too. So great.
Ok, so I’m going to get a little obscure here, but in a recent subscribers-only The Rest Is History episode (more on that to come), one of the hosts interviewed the British Library’s lead curator about some recent purchases. (Blog here) That’s where I first laid eyes on The Red Book of Bath. Described as a sort of “medieval Filofax,” I can picture someone very long ago carrying this thing around with them, just as I would my notebook today. It contains some incredible stuff; a “unique Life of King Arthur,” a sketch of the town pillory, a diagram for bloodletting someone, and sketched maps of the Mediterranean. I know I don’t get out much these days, but this one really inspired me to travel. The scans are amazing. And yes, I totally subscribe to the Medieval Manuscripts blog now. And no, I won’t trouble you with it further.
3. Moving from the 1420s to the 1490s… Who doesn’t love a novel in which the Monks of Bruton are an ominous presence? I was kept from much that I should’ve been doing otherwise, but I could not put down The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey. I discovered it via her delicious and more recent Orbital, which I also polished off in a sitting or two. The Western Wind is told in reverse chronological order. Throughout the book, I couldn’t figure out how she would land the proverbial plane. I didn’t want it to end. One of my favorites of the last decade. Do not pass go.
