Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
* * *

Dave Eggers | Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? | June 2014 | 23 minutes (5,800 words)
—I did it. You’re really here. An astronaut. Jesus.
—Who’s that?
—You probably have a headache. From the chloroform.
—What? Where am I? Where is this place? Who the fuck are you?
—You don’t recognize me?
—What? No. What is this? Read more…

–Meredith Hindley, in Humanities, on how the G.I. Bill was born, and how it initially faced opposition from some veterans groups.
Photo: FDR Library

At Aeon, Carlin Flora looks at the pros and cons of praising children and what psychologists say to avoid:
But the discussion about overpraising our children is drawing away from the real problem, says a child psychologist from Cornell, which is the way we criticize them:
Photo: U.S. Army

-Alex Halberstadt, in the New York Times Magazine, on the work of Dr. Vint Virga.
More animals in the Longreads Archive
Photo: jameslaing, Flickr

Lately there has been some angst about the state of longform journalism on the Internet. So I thought I’d share some quick data on what we’ve seen within the Longreads community: Read more…

-Om Malik, on the conversations we are still not having about personal data collection and our automated future.
More tech in the Longreads Archive
Photo: sylvain_latouche, Flickr

At Pacific Standard, Ted Scheinman talks to his favorite writers about how they deal with writer’s block. Some step away from their work and return to it later, while others look to their favorite writers for inspiration. One of the most interesting responses came from The Awl’s Choire Sicha, who says he hasn’t had to deal with writer’s block:
Photo: Drew Coffman

In the upcoming Sunday Book Review, Anna Holmes discusses some of the rookie mistakes she made as a new writer:

Mother—crazy as she was—had an exquisite sensibility. She read nonstop. Loads of history, Russian and Chinese particularly, and art history. There was nothing else to do in that suckhole of a town. You go outside, you run around, people throw dirt balls at you, you get your ass beat. But reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal.
People who didn’t live pre-Internet can’t grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I’ll never see it again.
-Mary Karr, in The Paris Review (2009), on growing up in Southeast Texas.
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