Blueprints & Buildings: Four Stories About Architecture
Four stories about architecture and design: the Urban Death Project, the materials we use to build, designing for the blind, and creating spaces in video games.
Inside Scientology: A Reading List
Stories about Scientology from Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, JSTOR Daily, and The Daily Beast.
Meals Behind Bars: A Reading List
Four stories about food in the prison system.
The Cold Rim of the World
The rise and fall of Pyramiden, a Russian mining town located in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
How Karina Longworth Is Reimagining Classic Hollywood—and the Podcast—in ‘You Must Remember This’
An interview with the former LA Weekly film writer about producing a podcast about classic Hollywood.
Why the World Is Betting on a Better Battery: A Reading List
A book, a documentary, and five stories on our battery-powered future.
I Ship It: Six Stories About Fanfiction
OTP: You and this reading list. I’ve wanted to share writing about fanfiction for some time. Fanfiction is often ridiculed (Why can’t the authors keep from inserting themselves into the story? Why is everyone having sex? Why does 50 Shades of Grey exist?!), but it’s a legitimate creative outlet. Fanfiction has played a small but significant role in my own life, and I’ll elaborate in my list.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Prep,’ 10 Years Later
Sittenfeld’s smart debut novel about social dynamics at an exclusive boarding school remains relevant—and not just as a “coming of age novel”—a decade after it was first published.
The Twisted History of Your Favorite Board Game
An interview with Mary Pilon about her new book, The Monopolists, which uncovers the real story about how Monopoly became the game it is today.
Stories of Punctuation and Typographic Marks: A Reading List
From the now-ubiquitous hashtag (or octothorpe, hash, pound, or whatever you like to call it) to the loved, hated, and misunderstood semicolon, punctuation marks not only help us shape our stories, but also have their own origins and histories and have become part of the narratives of our lives. Here are picks about six punctuation marks, from the comma to the asterisk.