M.J. Rose

Could this possibly be the best hotel for introverts and book lovers? The Literary Man hotel in Óbidos, Portugal has a massive reading lounge with over 50,000 books…

From HuffPost,
This Hotel With 50,000 Books Is A Literary Lover’s Dream Come True
Oh, and there’s a gin bar too.

by Suzy Strutner

“If you tend to spend your vacations reading, then this is the spot for you.
The Literary Man hotel in Óbidos, Portugal is home to about 50,000 books and counting, a manager told The Huffington Post. Some titles are available for purchase, and others are reserved for reading only in the historic hotel’s massive lounge, which is pretty much the book lover’s equivalent of a Caribbean island:

The Literary Man is nestled just outside the walls of the historic center of Óbidos, a charming medieval town that’s recently started embracing bookishness with the addition of new bookshops and a literary festival.

Guests at the hotel can savor their reads–which range from vintage titles to best-selling fiction to cookbooks–at the in-house gin bar, in the cellar during a massage or in a variety of cozy, simple hotel rooms. Prices start at about $90 per night, but we have a feeling we wouldn’t sleep a wink here…”

For glorious pictures of the hotel’s bookish interior, click here.

We would love it if someone would write a new series of novels about these fellows as perhaps they really were–quite advanced indeed….

From NBC News.com,

Neanderthal Used Early Version of Penicillin and Aspirin

“WASHINGTON — Eating like a caveman meant chowing down on woolly rhinos and sheep in Belgium, but munching on mushrooms, pine nuts and moss in Spain. It all depended on where they lived, new research shows.

Scientists got a sneak peek into the kitchen of three Neanderthals by scraping off the plaque stuck on their teeth and examining the DNA. What they found smashes a common public misconception that the caveman diet was mostly meat. They also found hints that one sickly teen used primitive versions of penicillin and aspirin to help ease his pain.

The dental plaque provides a lifelong record of what went in the Neanderthals’ mouths and the bacteria that lived in their guts, said study co-author Alan Cooper, director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA in Adelaide.

“It’s like a fossil,” he said…

For the rest, click here.

It’s time for something completely different…and completely nice.

From The Dodo,

Woman Throws Little Parties For The Squirrels Who Come To Visit Her
She builds them dining rooms and even food trucks.

by Caitlin Jill Anders

“After a woman discovered some injured baby squirrels in her yard, she felt a bond towards them, and decided to start doing something special.

Ashly Deskins woke up one morning to find that four baby squirrels had fallen from two different nests in her backyard. She watched in awe as one of the mother squirrels came down to save her babies — but unfortunately, the other two were left behind.

My husband and I attempted to save the other two abandoned squirrels by rushing them to a wildlife center,” Deskins told The Dodo. “Sadly, the injured babies did not survive, but the encounter sparked a special interest in the squirrels, which caused me to appreciate and enjoy them during my daily routine.”

From that moment on, Deskins couldn’t help but notice how many squirrels there were living near her apartment complex, and started to feel connected to them. Many of the squirrels would hang out on her back patio, and so she began leaving almonds for them occasionally. Then, she had a brilliant idea…”

For the rest, and more pictures, click here.