Newsletter

It’s a small miracle, I think, to experience a shift in perspective toward empathy. Being intentional about it is a small risk, a small assignment if you will, with the potential for a modest but meaningful personal reward.

An exploration of scale, limits, and care—featuring our new essay “By All Measures” and this week’s Top 5 reads.

“I want to be left alone, but I don’t want to be lonely.” Hanif Abdurraqib writes this about a tension that dominated the career of singer Phyllis Hyman—but it also feels like a familiar plea in this dim, early-January week, when many of us leave the chaos of extended family and drift back into our own homes, our own jobs, and perhaps our own small pockets of solitude.

For many of us, the weeks ahead offer a little more time and space for reading. Our year-end lists are filled with stories that will meet you wherever you are.

Every story changes our mind in some small way. They’re already in implicit conversation with one another, and our “Year in Reading” series acknowledges that.

Next week we’ll be sharing our favorite reads across several categories next week; first, though, we’re publishing a series of essays from your trusty Longreads editors, reflecting on our reading over the past year.

I had no idea that the hot, tingly pain of blood returning to a frozen extremity is called the screaming barfies, until I read “What Is a Body For?” by Diana Saverin.

We may often think of poetry as something formal or grand, or meant for the pages of a book. But these two essays remind us that poetry lives in many places.

As Thanksgiving and gluttony approach, I’ve been thinking about what foods represent America and how eating can shape a sense of identity—a theme past Longreads writers have been drawn to.

“I learned to adore the way he sidled against me and to hate his momentary affection, just as he learned to detach from me in weariness and depend on me in hunger. Days with him were a quick education in a cat’s existence.” I once spent a year shadowing a musician I loved, whose body […]