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What’s in a Home? A Reading List

Longreads Pick

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from Thought Catalog, The Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed, and The Billfold.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 19, 2014

What's in a Home? A Reading List

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

New York, London, Detroit, Indianapolis: What does it look like to make a home? To build a home? To live in an office building, with a Craiglist roommate, with your best friend, in a condemned house, without any electricity, in a bankrupt city, in one of most expensive cities in the world, with mice, with your dog, with your parents? Is home a place or a state of mind or a manifesto?

1. “Getting Uncomfortable With Being Uncomfortable.” (Chloe Caldwell, Thought Catalog, November 2013)

One of my favorite essays from Caldwell’s essay collection, Legs Get Led Astray, about what made the worst (and cheapest!) apartment in Brooklyn a home.

2. “In London, ‘Guardians’ Live in Empty Office Buildings.” (Art Patnaude, Wall Street Journal, January 2014)

To deter squatters, companies hire ‘guardians,’ from young professionals to 50somethings, to babysit buildings slated for construction or destruction. In the zany world of London real estate, the rent is a dream and the waiting list is 2,000 strong.

3. “Why I Bought A House In Detroit for $500.” (Drew Philip, Buzzfeed)

Part personal narrative, part history lesson and part something like hope-in-action, I learned more about Detroit reading this essay than any other: “We want things to flourish, but we want them to have roots.”

4. “Places I’ve Lived: Sleepwalking, Mice Herding, and Craigslist.” (Katherine Coplen, The Billfold, January 2014)

I’ve praised PIL before and The Billfold in general, and this installment is no exception. The writer sings Paul Simon in the shower. Who can resist?

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Photo: Moyan Brenn

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Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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

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How One Magazine Shaped Investigative Journalism in America

The following story comes recommended by Ben Marks, senior editor for Collectors Weekly:

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s most recent history, The Bully Pulpit, chronicles the intertwined lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, often in excruciating detail, from Roosevelt’s struggles with the bosses of his Republican party to the fungal infections that plagued Taft’s groin. But the most illuminating aspect of Pulpit is the spotlight it shines on the muckraking journalism of the early 20th century, particularly as practiced by a monthly magazine called McClure’s. There, writers such as Ida Tarbell, Ray Baker, and Lincoln Steffens held the feet of the powerful to the fire. In one landmark issue, January 1903, articles by all three were featured, including the third installment of Tarbell’s 12-part exposé of Standard Oil and Baker’s counter-intuitive, sympathetic portrait of coal miners, whose dire circumstances had forced them to cross picket lines. Read more…

Reading List: Stories About Unlikeable People

Longreads Pick

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from The New Yorker, Rookie, Buzzfeed, and Salon.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jan 5, 2014

Stories About Unlikeable People

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

Last Thursday, the NBC series “Community” returned with its creator and original showrunner, Dan Harmon, at the helm. I like “Community.” I do. It’s warm and dark and funny and self-referential. In spite of its absurdity—perhaps because of its absurdity—it is human; its characters are far from perfect. In this list, I wanted to include unlikeable people who are just that: people. People who do more than they thought they could do, who survive despite heartbreak and prejudice, who show us our truest selves and what we could be and, as T.S. Eliot wrote, “to care and not to care.”

1. “‘Community’ Two: Electric Boogaloo.” (Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker, January 2014)

The characters of “Community” are beloved, sure, but that doesn’t make them likable. Chevy Chase/Pierce Hawthorne was booted off the show for Harmon’s sake. His character was the worst human ever and probably the most human of all “Community” characters, but that’s neither here nor there. Nevertheless, the show is back, Jeff Winger is making ethically questionable decisions again, and we get to watch friendship avert the darkest timeline—hopefully.

2. “Enjoy the Show.” (Pixie, Rookie, December 2013)

A short story about falling in love and placeholders and Christmas gifts and when people you like do things you hate.

3. “Not Here To Make Friends.” (Roxane Gay, BuzzFeed, January 2014)

Gay ponders why it feels important to like the characters in the books we read, and why we feel revulsion to those who don’t immediately endear themselves. She approaches several novels written by women and explores what makes their characters unlikeable and therefore worthwhile: “Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don’t dare be so alive.”

4. “I Used to Love the Bride.” (Anna Pulley, Salon, April 2013)

“You have no idea what kindnesses you’re capable of,” Anna writes, because Anna loves Ellie. They were going to get married, but it fell apart, and now Ellie’s engaged to someone else. Anna’s going to be in the wedding.

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Reading List: If Christmas Were Forever

Longreads Pick

This week’s picks from Emily include stories from Buzzfeed, Tampa Bay Times, The New Republic, and Salon.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 29, 2013

Reading List: If Christmas Were Forever

I wish Christmas lasted forever. Okay, maybe not forever, but at least a week. I try to make this a reality by visiting different family members and friends and exchanging gifts during the week between Christmas & New Year’s, “forgetting” these gifts and having to revisit aforementioned friends, listening to Christmas music longer than conventionally appropriate, and supporting my mother as she attempts to keep our Christmas tree alive until March. I gripe and groan with everyone else when Target sets out its holiday decor the day after Halloween, but secretly I’m thrilled. So you’ll understand that this week’s reading list is devoted to the holidays. I’m just not ready to let go.

1. “High for the Holidays.” (Isaac Fitzgerald, Buzzfeed, December 2013)

If by some freak accident you haven’t stumbled across Isaac Fitzgerald’s personal essay about hiking Mount Kilimanjaro with his family, now you have no excuse. It’s a beaut.

2. “Egyptian Christian family celebrates holiday, free from persecution.” (Lane DeGregory, Tampa Bay Times, December 2013)

A Coptic Christian family living in Florida gets to celebrate Christmas without danger — unlike last year. Human interest wizard Lane DeGregory reports.

3. “Christmas for Jews is the Greatest Holiday.” (Marc Tracy, New Republic, December 2013)

It’s more than an average Wednesday and less than “Christmas Envy”: “A day on which we derive more enjoyment—schep more naches, if you will—from standing apart than from blending in; from being unconventional, not conventional.”

4. “Two-Sentence Holiday Fiction.” (David Daley, Salon, December 2013)

A squadron of wonderful writers pen two-sentence holiday tales. The results are disturbing, charming, and, well, festive.

Longreads Best of 2013: Here Are All 49 of Our No. 1 Story Picks From This Year

Every week, Longreads sends out an email with our Top 5 story picks—so here it is, every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year. If you like these, you can sign up to receive our free Top 5 email every Friday.

Happy holidays! Read more…

Reading List: Amazing People for Desperate Times

Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.

I have a group of comedian friends; we go bowling every Wednesday and contribute to a magazine called The Annual. In the wake of recent personal misfortune, they’ve been a refuge for me. After spending time with them, I feel inspired. I listen to comedy podcasts, commit myself to books I haven’t quite finished, and make furtive jots in my journal.

Here are four pieces about people I don’t know who do the same thing.

“Tig Notaro And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Yet Somehow Completely Amazing Year.” (Sandra Allen, Buzzfeed, August 2013)

What an utter badass. I’m all about women, and women in comedy, and women in comedy getting the recognition they deserve. Tig had cancer and a breakup and a death in the family and wow, wow, wow, she leads this life of grace and humor. She has a dozen projects going. What a human.

“Now We Are Five.” (David Sedaris, The New Yorker, October 2013)

Weirdly, gay memoirists are my go-to after breakups (by which I mean Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris). My favorite Sedaris essays are about his family. Here, Sedaris forgoes his typical absurdism in favor of a more reflective piece on the recent suicide of his sister, Tiffany. He is funny and tender.

“The Rumpus Interview With John Jeremiah Sullivan.” (Greg Gerke, The Rumpus, April 2012)

I am equal parts inspired and intimidated (actually, far far far more intimidated) by JJS. He’s the “southern editor” for the Paris Review. Is that even a real position? I think the Paris Review invented it just for him, because he was too important to not have on staff. Think about it.

“Tavi Gevinson, Rookie.” (Duane Fernandez, Left Field Project, September 2013)

Is this a “longread?” No, and I don’t care. Tavi is incredibly inspiring, not just because of her youth, but because she Makes Things Happen for herself. She is artistic and energetic and makes me want to Make Things.

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Photo: CleftClips

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