State of the #Longreads, 2014

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…

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…

–Chris Jones goes to Antarctica for AFAR.
More Jones in the Longreads Archive
Photo: marthaenpiet, Flickr

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.
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Barry Grass | The Normal School | Spring 2014 | 18 minutes (4,537 words)
Every year in Kansas City this is heralded by a gigantic special section in The Kansas City Star crammed full of positive reporting and hopeful predictions about the coming season. Each year it is another variation on the same theme: “This is Our Year” or “Is This Our Year?” or “Can the Royals Win it All?” or “Our Time” or “How Good are these Royals?” or “How Good are these Royals” or or or. It gets tiresome after growing up hearing it year after year, because the answer has always been the same. The answer is no. It’s not our time. It’s not our year. No, the Royals aren’t going to win it all. These Royals are not very good. No. Read more…

Emily Gould | Friendship | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | July 2014 | 8 minutes (1,893 words)
Below is the opening chapter of Friendship, the new novel by Emily Gould, who we’ve featured often on Longreads in the past. Thanks to Gould and FSG for sharing it with the Longreads community. You can purchase the full book from WORD Bookstores.

Sam Kean | The Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons | 2014 | 12 minutes (3,008 words)
For our latest Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share a story from The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, a new book from science reporter Sam Kean looking at stories about the brain and the history of neuroscience. Here’s Kean:
In our minds, we more or less equate our identities with our memories; our very selves seem the sum total of all we’ve done and felt and seen. That’s why we cling to our memories so hard, even to our detriment sometimes—they seem the only bulwark we have against the erosion of the self. That’s also why disorders that rob us of our memories seem so cruel.
In the excerpt below, I explore one of the most profound cases of amnesia in medical history, H.M., who taught us several important things about how memory works. Perhaps most important, he taught us that different types of memories exist in the brain, and that each type is controlled by different structures. In fact, H.M. so profoundly changed our ideas about memory that it’s hard to remember what things were like before him.

At Vogue, Mira Jacob writes about watching her parents love 30 years after being paired up in an arranged marriage:
Photo: Cindy Funk

My last Yes, All Women reading list was a hit with the Longreads community, so here’s part two. Enjoy 20 pieces by fantastic women writers.
“The first thing to go is the caring…You develop a routine: changing out of sleeping leggings and into daytime leggings.”
Dov Charney, Terry Richardson…and the Iraq War? The 2000s were rough.
Seven helpful tips for living practically and creatively. I’m particularly fond of “use your commute.”

—BBC correspondent Allan Little recalls a memory from the spring of 2003, during his time covering the war in Iraq. Little’s essay explores the role of civilian correspondents from the battle front, as well as the “magnetic pull that war has on the young male imagination.”
Image: “Paths of Glory” by Christopher Nevinson, via Wikimedia Commons. The painting, which depicts a World War I battlefield, was deemed bad for morale and immediately censored.

Earlier this year, a 17-year-old high school student from the Bronx named Donna Grace Moleta won the chance to meet Bill Nye “the Science Guy.”
“Meeting my childhood hero was one of the greatest experience of my life,” she told the Bronx Times. “It’s something I’ll never forget. He’s such a strong believer in what science and education can do.”
Inspired by Ms. Moleta’s experience, here’s a reading list of some of our childhood heroes:
Getting to work with a celebrated comic artist:
…I emailed him the strip and thanked him for all his great work and the influence he’d had on me. And never expected to get a reply.
And what do you know, he wrote back.
Let me tell you. Just getting an email from Bill Watterson is one of the most mind-blowing, surreal experiences I have ever had. Bill Watterson really exists? And he sends email? And he’s communicating with me?
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