Author Archives

Em Perper
Bookseller, writer, editor.

‘So What Do You Do?’: A Reading List

“So what do you do?” is one of the most commonly asked questions at parties. Here: four first-person accounts of folks working in different industries.

1. TSA Screener: “Dear America, I Saw You Naked.” (Jason Edward Harrington, Politico, January 2014)

Those full-body scanners? They don’t work. One TSA agent is speaking out.

Read more…

Looking Back on 'The X-Files': A Reading List

I watched “The X-Files” in a Baltimore house I shared with eight people, at the end of days spent navigating the city’s shaky public transit system, alternating between feeling perfectly in place and wildly lost. That’s how I felt when I watch “The X-Files,” too: One moment I was perfectly attuned to Agents Mulder & Scully’s plan of attack; the next, I was baffled as the agents discovering a farm of clones or a UFO witness who also happens to be a serial killer. Confused? Intrigued? You are not alone. And the truth is out there.

(Some spoilers ahead.)

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What's in a Home? A Reading List

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

New York, London, Detroit, Indianapolis: What does it look like to make a home? To build a home? To live in an office building, with a Craiglist roommate, with your best friend, in a condemned house, without any electricity, in a bankrupt city, in one of most expensive cities in the world, with mice, with your dog, with your parents? Is home a place or a state of mind or a manifesto?

1. “Getting Uncomfortable With Being Uncomfortable.” (Chloe Caldwell, Thought Catalog, November 2013)

One of my favorite essays from Caldwell’s essay collection, Legs Get Led Astray, about what made the worst (and cheapest!) apartment in Brooklyn a home.

2. “In London, ‘Guardians’ Live in Empty Office Buildings.” (Art Patnaude, Wall Street Journal, January 2014)

To deter squatters, companies hire ‘guardians,’ from young professionals to 50somethings, to babysit buildings slated for construction or destruction. In the zany world of London real estate, the rent is a dream and the waiting list is 2,000 strong.

3. “Why I Bought A House In Detroit for $500.” (Drew Philip, Buzzfeed)

Part personal narrative, part history lesson and part something like hope-in-action, I learned more about Detroit reading this essay than any other: “We want things to flourish, but we want them to have roots.”

4. “Places I’ve Lived: Sleepwalking, Mice Herding, and Craigslist.” (Katherine Coplen, The Billfold, January 2014)

I’ve praised PIL before and The Billfold in general, and this installment is no exception. The writer sings Paul Simon in the shower. Who can resist?

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Photo: Moyan Brenn

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Bigfoot, Nessie, and the Study of Hidden Animals

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

I spent this morning exploring The Museum of Unnatural History in Washington D.C. Fueled by the likes of Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman and Paul Simon, the museum is the storefront for 826DC, which holds workshops and tutors local kids in creative writing and reading. A venue combining my fascination with cryptozoology, contemporary literature, and teaching kids to write? Sounds positively mythical.

But I’ve been fascinated by cryptozoology, the study of hidden animals, since middle school; I devoured Paul Zindel’s Loch and Reef of Death. In college, I read that essayist and poet Wendell Berry’s daughter, Mary, said, “I hope there is an animal somewhere that nobody has ever seen.  And I hope nobody ever sees it.” A week ago, Dan Harmon, creator of “Community” proposed to his fiancé at Loch Ness. And today I admired stencils of chupacabras and jars of unicorn burps. Cryptozoology reveals all the best and worst parts of human nature, and it makes for great storytelling.

1. “The Private Lives of the Cryptozoologists.” (Martin Connelly, The Morning News, March 2013)

Step into the cabinet of curiosities: The International Cryptozoology Museum is in Portland, Maine. It’s stuffed with artifacts ranging from a taxidermy Bigfoot to children’s drawings to blurry photos. It’s staffed by sweater vest-clad Loren Coleman, a foremost authority on cryptozoology and a wonderful tour guide.

2. “Bigfoot.” (Robert Sullivan, Open Spaces Magazine, 2012)

Sullivan interviews several of the men most invested in finding Sasquatch; these profiles read like entries from a delightful almanac. Though their methods range from field work to anthropological study, these men share a rivalry with each other and anger toward the scientific community’s contempt for them.

3. “Dr. Orbell’s Unlikely Quest.” (Eric Karlan, All About Birds, Winter 2004)

Cryptozoology isn’t only Bigfoot and Nessie. These scientists are also interested in animals thought to be extinct. Here, Eric Karlan delves into Dr. Geoffrey Orbell’s triumphant search for the Takahe—a bright, flightless, stocky bird native to New Zealand, supposedly gone forever–which took over 40 years of scrupulous research in the face of naysayers.

4. “Loch Ness Memoir.” (Tom Bissell, Virginia Quarterly Review, August 2006)

With weird, wonderful humor, skeptic Tom Bissell explores Loch Ness with two writer friends and his childhood love of Nessiteras rhombopteryx.

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Photo: JD Hancock

Stories About Unlikeable People

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

Last Thursday, the NBC series “Community” returned with its creator and original showrunner, Dan Harmon, at the helm. I like “Community.” I do. It’s warm and dark and funny and self-referential. In spite of its absurdity—perhaps because of its absurdity—it is human; its characters are far from perfect. In this list, I wanted to include unlikeable people who are just that: people. People who do more than they thought they could do, who survive despite heartbreak and prejudice, who show us our truest selves and what we could be and, as T.S. Eliot wrote, “to care and not to care.”

1. “‘Community’ Two: Electric Boogaloo.” (Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker, January 2014)

The characters of “Community” are beloved, sure, but that doesn’t make them likable. Chevy Chase/Pierce Hawthorne was booted off the show for Harmon’s sake. His character was the worst human ever and probably the most human of all “Community” characters, but that’s neither here nor there. Nevertheless, the show is back, Jeff Winger is making ethically questionable decisions again, and we get to watch friendship avert the darkest timeline—hopefully.

2. “Enjoy the Show.” (Pixie, Rookie, December 2013)

A short story about falling in love and placeholders and Christmas gifts and when people you like do things you hate.

3. “Not Here To Make Friends.” (Roxane Gay, BuzzFeed, January 2014)

Gay ponders why it feels important to like the characters in the books we read, and why we feel revulsion to those who don’t immediately endear themselves. She approaches several novels written by women and explores what makes their characters unlikeable and therefore worthwhile: “Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don’t dare be so alive.”

4. “I Used to Love the Bride.” (Anna Pulley, Salon, April 2013)

“You have no idea what kindnesses you’re capable of,” Anna writes, because Anna loves Ellie. They were going to get married, but it fell apart, and now Ellie’s engaged to someone else. Anna’s going to be in the wedding.

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Reading List: If Christmas Were Forever

I wish Christmas lasted forever. Okay, maybe not forever, but at least a week. I try to make this a reality by visiting different family members and friends and exchanging gifts during the week between Christmas & New Year’s, “forgetting” these gifts and having to revisit aforementioned friends, listening to Christmas music longer than conventionally appropriate, and supporting my mother as she attempts to keep our Christmas tree alive until March. I gripe and groan with everyone else when Target sets out its holiday decor the day after Halloween, but secretly I’m thrilled. So you’ll understand that this week’s reading list is devoted to the holidays. I’m just not ready to let go.

1. “High for the Holidays.” (Isaac Fitzgerald, Buzzfeed, December 2013)

If by some freak accident you haven’t stumbled across Isaac Fitzgerald’s personal essay about hiking Mount Kilimanjaro with his family, now you have no excuse. It’s a beaut.

2. “Egyptian Christian family celebrates holiday, free from persecution.” (Lane DeGregory, Tampa Bay Times, December 2013)

A Coptic Christian family living in Florida gets to celebrate Christmas without danger — unlike last year. Human interest wizard Lane DeGregory reports.

3. “Christmas for Jews is the Greatest Holiday.” (Marc Tracy, New Republic, December 2013)

It’s more than an average Wednesday and less than “Christmas Envy”: “A day on which we derive more enjoyment—schep more naches, if you will—from standing apart than from blending in; from being unconventional, not conventional.”

4. “Two-Sentence Holiday Fiction.” (David Daley, Salon, December 2013)

A squadron of wonderful writers pen two-sentence holiday tales. The results are disturbing, charming, and, well, festive.

Reading List: A Little Help From My Friends

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

One of my favorite things about the Longreads community is the dialogue among readers. I know each of the readers below personally. They are all exquisitely well-read. They all have different interests; they all read different publications, and I get so, so excited whenever they email or tweet me a piece they love. This week, we present Joss Whedon and Wikipedia and David Byrne and a cross-dressing not-so-Everyman from Wyoming. (I told you these were good.)

Want to be a part of this community? Want to support Longreads during the holidays? Looking for a last-minute gift for the longform lover in your life? Give a gift subscription to yourself or your friend or that blogger you admire from afar.

1. “The Decline of Wikipedia.” (Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review, October 2013)

Recommended by Jordan. Can Wikipedia’s bureaucratic policies and shrinking volunteer team stay afloat?

2. “David Byrne: Will Work For Inspiration.” (David Byrne, Creative Time Reports, October 2013)

Recommended by Elena. What makes a city inspiring? Byrne critiques New York’s increasingly exclusionary nature and longs for a future where aspiring artists can afford to express themselves.

3. “In Wyoming, He’s Tough Enough to be a Sissy.” (John M. Glionna, LA Times, October 2013)

Recommended by Hännah. Sissy Goodwin, a cross-dressing cowboy, reclaimed a derogatory epithet, stands up to bullies, and inspires his students and family daily.

4. “Serenity Now! An Interview with Joss Whedon.” (Jim Kozak, InFocus, August 2005)

Recommended by Elizabeth, who sends me biweekly reading recommendations and introduced me to Firefly and Lost. It’s no surprise she passed along this vintage Whedon interview.

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Photo of David Byrne: Wikimedia Commons

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Reading List: Flannery O'Connor's Prayer Journal

Flannery O'Connor
Photo credit: AP Images

Known for her grotesque short stories, mythic personality and Southern Catholic faith, O’Connor’s prayer journal ends in her 22nd year, before, as Casey N. Cep writes in The New Yorker, “the literature itself was a prayer.”

“Flannery O’Connor’s Desire For God.” (Jen Vafidis, The Daily Beast, November 2013)

O’Connor believed that any fiction that revealed her own character would be inherently awful writing. In her prayer journal, she critiques her own ideas of love and faith and success, covering oatmeal cookies and metaphysics.

“God’s Grandeur: The Prayer Journal of Flannery O’Connor.” (Carlene Bauer, The Virginia Quarterly Review, November 2013)

Intermixed with excerpts from O’Connor’s letters, this tender review focuses on her seemingly one-dimensional attitude toward human love and clarifies its nuance.

“Inheritance and Invention: Flannery O’Connor’s Prayer Journal.” (Casey Cep, The New Yorker, November 2013)

Casey N. Cep has fast become one of my new favorite writers. In this excellent review, Cep emphasizes that O’Connor’s prayer journal was a highly internal affair, both a way to get at a more authentic relationship with God and work through her blossoming writing career.

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Photo by Brent Payne

Reading List: Mother’s Day

With Mother’s Day on the horizon, I chose “mothers/relationship with moms” as the theme of my list this week:

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1. My Mom (Mary H. K. Choi, Aeon, April 2013)

A deceptively simple title belies a gorgeous, funny, sometimes dark essay in which Choi attempts to communicate her strange affection for her mother.

 

2. The Love of My Life (Cheryl Strayed, The Sun, Sept. 2002)

The indomitable Strayed explores the unexpected intersection of sex, death, grief, marriage, and, above all, her overwhelming love for her mother.

 

3. The Beautiful Daughter: How My Korean Mother Gave Me the Courage to Transition (Andy Marra, The Huffington Post, Nov. 2012)

Andy Marra returns to Korea to find her biological family and ponders whether or not to reveal that she’s transgender.

 

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