Emily Perper is a freelance editor and reporter, currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps.

As my service year winds down and I begin to look for jobs, I’m simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by the New York mythos. Here are four pieces that explore the romance, the real estate, the heartbreak and the hard-at-work.

1. “Here is New York.” (E.B. White, 1949)

White discusses the “nearness of giants,” the essential alone/never alone dichotomy and general spectacle of New York, N.Y.

2. ”Goodbye to All That.” (Joan Didion, 1967)

The yin to White’s yang, here is Didion’s quintessential emotional examination of New York.

3. ”I Want This Apartment.” (Susan Orlean, The New Yorker, February 1999)

The cutthroat Manhattan real estate market calls for a sharp-eyed guru. Enjoy pre-recession prices and capitalization of the word “internet.”

4. ”At Home on the Church Steps.” (Mindy Lewis, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, February 2013)

As apartment buildings are converted to condos, Lewis watches a dear neighbor become homeless and wonders at “a future where compassion is always trumped by enterprise.”

•••

What are you reading (and loving)? Tell us.

Photo: JWPhotography2012