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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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Longreads Best of 2014: Essay Writing

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in essay writing.

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Meaghan O’Connell
Freelance writer, “Birth Story” author, motherhood columnist at The Cut, who believes her best work is at The Billfold.

The Empathy Exams (Leslie Jamison, The Believer)

I did not know who Leslie Jamison was before I read her essay “Empathy Exams” late one night at the pie shop that I use as an office when the library is closed. I was hungry, and it was dark out, and I was very pregnant and needed to get home. But I stayed in that uncomfortable chair and read it the whole way through, bursting with excitement. I G-chatted friends in all caps asking them if they’d read it. I Googled her, saw she had a book coming out, and floated home feeling like, “Yes, let’s do this. Let’s write some fucking personal essays, people!” I think Jamison, especially here, convinced or re-convinced a lot of people of the possibilities and the value of writing in the first person. Of course I think it’s horse shit that it takes a white lady with a veneer of intellectualism to make it okay, but I’ll take it where I can get it. Jamison, for her part, rises to the occasion. She certainly reminded me to hang onto the art of the thing, all the while going deeper, letting the problem of whatever you’re trying to do take up its own space. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2014: Science Stories

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in science writing.

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Virginia Hughes
Science reporter and soon-to-be science editor at BuzzFeed.

The Itch Nobody Can Scratch (Will Storr, Matter)

I’ve thought about this story (an excerpt from Storr’s book, The Unpersuadables) many, many times since reading it. It’s superficially about Morgellons, a disease in which people think that they’re infected with bugs or fibers. But it’s really about the nature of disease and diagnosis, evidence and belief. It’s creepy, fascinating, and profound. The best part about it is the way Storr describes these patients and their delusions. It would be easy to make them seem stupid or crazy or worse. But Storr’s writing creates empathy and understanding. The not-insignificant downside of this piece: it makes you feel itchy. Read more…

The Rotten and the Sublime: A Reading List on Fermentation

Fermented products occupy a strange spot in contemporary food culture, being at once some of the most enduring staples of our diets — and some of the most faddish. From the fizzy kick of kimchi to avant-garde culinary experimentation in Copenhagen, here are five stories about our fascination with (and, sure, addiction to) deliciously rotten food.

1. “Why Bakers Love Their Mothers.” (Dana Goodyear, Food & Wine, November 2013)

Some of the oldest sourdough starters, dubbed mothers — “the bubbling, breathing slick of wild yeast and Lactobacillus bacteria that feed on flour and water” — date from the 19th century and are passed, like a heirloom, from one generation to the next. In this piece, Goodyear lingers on the moving emotional connections bakers develop with the bacteria in their kitchens.

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Longreads Best of 2014: Crime Reporting

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in crime reporting.

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Ashley Powers
Freelance journalist in Miami and a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

By Noon They’d Both Be In Heaven (Hanna Rosin, New York Magazine)

Kelli Stapleton is a Michigan mom who admitted to a particularly heinous crime: trying to kill her 14-year-old autistic daughter, Issy, via carbon monoxide poisoning. In a lesser journalist’s hands, she could have ended up a caricature, but Rosin tells her story solely in shades of gray. One minute your heart breaks for Kelli, and the next you fume at her apparent selfishness. Kelli spent years on an exhausting form of therapy for her daughter in hopes of coaxing out “the Isabelle that was in there.” Instead, Issy grew into a sometimes-violent teenager who repeatedly knocked Kelli unconscious. Kelli blogged about her struggles, ostensibly to raise awareness, but her look-at-me tone convinced her husband’s family she was more interested in fame than mothering. I’ve read the story several times, and I still don’t know what to make of Kelli. But I can’t stop thinking about her. Read more…

Longreads Best of 2014: Sports Writing

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in sports writing.

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Eva Holland
Freelance writer based in Canada’s Yukon Territory.

Together We Make Football (Louisa Thomas, Grantland)

It’s been a bad year for football: Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, the lingering Jameis Winston saga. And a bad year for football means a big year for think pieces about violence and football—I couldn’t tell you how many of those I read this year. But one of them stood out. In “Together We Make Football,” Louisa Thomas reflects on the uncomfortable relationship between the NFL, masculinity, violence, and women. She takes her time, building a case slowly and methodically, before driving home her point: that violence is inherent to, and integral to, the NFL. That although the vast majority of football players don’t beat their wives, there may be no way to separate the bad violence—the off-field violence—from the on-field violence that we love. Here’s Thomas: Read more…

Recognizing the People Who Work Backstage Via Webcomic

I don’t think that every strip I’ve written is so backstage elitist that it’s inaccessible for everyone. You don’t have to be an expert in any field to get it. I’m hardly a sound design expert, I’ve stage managed once, and I’ve hardly even touched a light board. But I’ve been around it and I’ve got a sense of the culture that I’m trying to reflect. So much of what I’m poking fun at is situational. I’ve got friends that are not theatre people who have read my strips and tell me that it reads like a bunch of jokes you had to have been there for, which I suppose is why it works for my readers because most of them have been there. Sometimes the situations are funny on their own, and the barrier is very low, and other times the situation is exceedingly specific, so specific that Google isn’t going to help you.

One of my favourite parts of making this comic happens right after I update and the comments roll in with people saying they’ve been in those situations before or they’ve always wanted to say or do whatever I’ve written. It keeps the tech experience from being isolating. There’s only one stage manager in a show and it is sometimes difficult to find and develop a sense of community among others who have shared similar experiences. That Q2Q provides that for some people makes me supremely happy…

There’s not a lot of recognition out there for the people that work backstage, and I like that my comics help to let those people know that what they do is appreciated, and they are not alone.

– In theatre, a “cue to cue” is a long, technical rehearsal. The lighting and sound designers practice and polish effects and transitions. Q2Q is a webcomic created by Steven Younkins that illustrates the unexpected humor and unforeseen obstacles behind the scenes. Instead of actors, Q2Q focuses on the techies responsible for light, sound, stage management, set design and more. Exeunt Magazine interviewed Younkins about his niche audience, his love of comics and his artistic philosophy.

(Disclaimer: I know Younkins personally; we work at the same theater. I am not a character in his webcomic.)

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Five Stories About Addiction

Stories of drug addiction take many forms; every story is different and intensely personal. This week, read an excerpt from a journalist’s memoir, a profile of a lead singer, a mother’s reflection and more.

1. “My Rehab: Coming of Age in Purgatory.” (Kevin Heldman, The Big Roundtable, September 2013)

Naively, I expected a cut-and-dry story of teenage years spent in and out of rehab. Instead, I read about Kevin Heldman’s experiences in “therapy” centers that used disturbing, humiliating “treatments.” In spite of the staff’s best efforts, Heldman made friends—many whose futures were tainted by their time in the Therapeutic Community. Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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.

* * *

Read more…

Inside the Collapse of the New Republic

Longreads Pick

Admittedly impartial, but thorough, breakdown by Lizza (a former contributing editor for TNR) on what happened when owner Chris Hughes attempted to replace the editor he hired, Franklin Foer, and reinvent the 100-year-old magazine as a digital media company.

Author: Ryan Lizza
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Dec 12, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,699 words)