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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we have stories from Christopher Johnston and Erin Quinlan, Dan McQuade, Crystal Wilkinson, Simon Akam, and Nicholson Baker.
Our Narrative Prison
“The three-act ‘hero’s journey’ has long been the most prominent kind of story. What other tales are there to tell?”
40 Days in a Jungle and Our Top 5
“The skies were blue that day, and there was a light wind. For around half an hour all was well. But as the Cessna approached Caquetá, a Colombian department that contains one of the densest, wettest, most remote corners of the Amazon, something went wrong.” Pat yourselves on the back: you’ve made it through January. […]
Best of 2024: All Our Number Five Story Picks
Every story that appeared in the number five slot in our Weekly Top 5, all in one place.
An Interview with ‘Call Me By Your Name’ Author André Aciman
The author on his writing process and what it was like to watch a film based on one of his books.
Longreads Member Exclusive: The Anthologist (Excerpt), by Nicholson Baker
This week’s Longreads Member pick is Chapter 1 from Nicholson Baker’s 2009 novel, The Anthologist, published by Simon & Schuster. The excerpt comes recommended by Hilary Armstrong, a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She writes: Someone I love once told me that they don’t understand poetry. It’s all random line breaks and rhythms […]
Longreads Member Exclusive: The Anthologist (Excerpt), by Nicholson Baker
This week’s Longreads Member pick is Chapter 1 from Nicholson Baker’s 2009 novel, The Anthologist, published by Simon & Schuster. The excerpt comes recommended by Hilary Armstrong, a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She writes: Someone I love once told me that they don’t understand poetry. It’s all random line breaks and rhythms […]
Longreads Member Exclusive: The Anthologist (Excerpt)
This week’s Longreads Member pick is Chapter 1 from Nicholson Baker’s 2009 novel, The Anthologist, published by Simon & Schuster. The excerpt comes recommended by Hilary Armstrong, a literature student at U.C. Santa Barbara and a Longreads intern. She writes: “Someone I love once told me that they don’t understand poetry. It’s all random line […]
Slate's Dan Kois: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011
Dan Kois is a senior editor at Slate and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. (See his Longreads page here.) *** First of all, I am not even going to bother listing John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Disney World piece because it was obviously the best thing anywhere this year but everyone agrees and […]


