In this edition: Lost soul, copy that, missing beats, muzzled watchdogs, and a ramblin’ man.
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Love and Murder in South Africa
“Those tears were the product of the education I’d come for.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending stories from Yasmin Tayag, Elliott Woods, David Ramsey, Larissa Diakiw, and A.S. Hamrah.
Our Year in Reading and the Week’s Top 5
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.
Chuck Palahniuk Is Not Who You Think He Is
“Twenty-six books in, the author has made a career of writing about loners, misfits, and deviants. But the man behind these controversial and transgressive fictions is full of surprises.”
Disposable Heroes
“Christine Blasey Ford’s memoir captures the hazards of ‘coming forward.’”
A “Super” Walk of Contradictions (and Our Top 5)
“To my right is one of the largest manmade toxic holes on Earth. To my left, shelves of coal-colored slag piled twenty feet high. And underfoot, ten thousand miles of poisoned shafts swimming with ghosts.” Hello from Berkeley, California. Our family loves to explore the city’s parks, where we can hike through redwood forests in […]
This Week: Rituals, Emoji, and a Cold Case
“Ritual is an urge and an act; it’s an aesthetic gesture. As an adult I established the habit of turning my attention to those subtle seasonal details and recording them. I was loving and honoring the land, but this practice still left something undone. A certain clarity, maybe formality. Something like a frame around a […]
When Hannibal Lecter Took Over
With “The Silence of the Lambs” hitting theaters, Orion wanted a hit. They didn’t anticipate an antihero.
A Year in Reading: Inward Journeys
Navigating a world in flux demands some understanding of who you really are, and some of my favorite pieces from this year speak to that need.


