The Elementary Particles — Shock Literature at Its Best.

This 1998 novel by French provocateur Michel Houellebecq (pronounced Hwell-beck, and not, as everyone hoped, Hollaback) is at its heart the story of two half-brothers navigating life after their mother abandoned them. In reality, the novel is so raw, frank and sardonic that when it won the prestigious Prix Novembre, the prize’s patron resigned in protest, and the award was renamed the Prix Decembre. On top of that, Houellebecq’s mother was so pissed off at what she saw as an indictment of her parenting that she published her own memoir, The Innocent, bashing her deadbeat son.

Dissect — Go Deep Into Your Favorite Songs.

Recommendation lists can be incredibly stressful (sorry!): a series of add-ons to the ever-growing list of stuff you have to read, watch, download, pay attention to. One way of avoiding the brain-melting hustle is to just rewatch The Office, and we support that. But another option is Dissect, a Spotify podcast that chooses one album per season and breaks it down track by track, discussing every aspect in minute detail. Host Cole Cuchna goes into the way a song was sampled, how a voice or instrument was pitched or the speed of the music in a way that appeals to music nerds but is still comprehensible to people who just like music but aren’t trained in it. Cuchna uses original research to analyze lyrics and constantly asks listeners to be open-minded and positive about the art they’re considering. Dive into the just-finished Season 3, which focused on Frank Ocean’s Blonde — try the Skyline To/Self Control episode or the Nights episode. The show also just announced a miniseries of episodes, dropping this fall, that’ll analyze The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill for the album’s 20th anniversary.

Northern Ireland — The Greenest Place on Earth.

We may have to rescind this recommendation depending on what Brexit does to the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (for the uninitiated, the former is its own country while the latter is one of the four countries that make up the U.K.). As of now, though, this is a somewhat undiscovered vacation gem.

You may be tempted to speed through Belfast, the capital, after visiting the local museum about the Titanic, which was built in a Belfast shipyard before, um, sinking. But the countryside is really where it’s at: There’s Giant’s Causeway, a volcanic rock formation of weirdly industrial looking columns accompanied by a legend about warring giants playing tricks on each other. Beyond that, you can visit castles, rolling hills, tiny pubs — and a bunch of Game of Thrones shooting locations like Dark Hedges, a terrifying treelined lane which, naturally, is reputed to be haunted by a Grey Lady. Not The New York Times, a different Grey Lady.

There’s also “coasteering,” in which you don a wetsuit and climb up and down the country’s coastal rock formations (supervised by someone who will hopefully not let you fall and die), followed by cliff jumping into the unbelievably cold ocean, which is a thing that you can do for fun or because you want to punish your circulatory system. No judgment, that’s between you and your circulatory system.