Worth Your Time: Abandoned Cuban Ballet School, Erotic Books, Turkey’s Golden Age of Spying

Plan for Cuban Ballet School a Dance of Art, Politics — “…the school’s original structures are intact, a dazzling swirl of red brick shapes and huge domelike Catalonian vaults set against the lush green jungle. The winding corridors, stairways and sightlines come together in a cascade of twists and graceful curves, like music turned to stone.”

Ten Erotic Books Sexier Than Fifty Shades of Grey — “The following ten erotic books are alternatives we at Time Out New York find riskier, sexier and simply better written than E.L. James’s feminist-baiting juvenilia.” Includes Nicholson Baker’s Vox and How a Person Should Be by Sheila Heti. Great round-up.

Istanbul: A City of Spies: In Fact and Fiction — “Turkey’s golden age of espionage was World War II, a period that continues to serves as a muse for writers of historical thrillers.”

How to Move from Travel Blogging to Travel Journalism — Matador Network’s David Miller breaks it down for those of us who feel as if we are in purgatory between blogging and journalism: “‘Journo-mode’ is similar in that it can stimulate story-finding, but instead of approaching a given experience or place with the goal of internalizing it for a blog, you’re reaching outside of yourself, looking for others’ stories that would never be told otherwise.”

How to Be Friends With Another Woman — Girl…Roxane Gay’s helpful guide – re-printed on Jezebel – makes me think.

Remnants of Japan’s Tsunami Attract Archaeological Interest  — ” These citizen scientists aren’t waiting for government direction. Kayakers in Washington have taken it upon themselves to explore remote islands for refuse, surfers in Oregon have posted cleanup guidelines on local beaches, and scuba divers in Hawaii have retrieved debris off the coast of Maui. Their efforts have quickly become the backbone of a national effort to better understand what is washing up along thousands of miles of coastline.”