Olivia Potts | Longreads | November 2022 | 16 minutes (4,649 words) It’s six in the morning, and Robert Booth has already been on the road for three hours. Sitting alongside him in the cab of his lorry (the British term for a truck) is Louis, Robert’s small dog, a Jack Russell-chihuahua mix, and a washing-up bowl […]
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Alternative Reality: ‘Inferno in Paradise’
President Donald Trump has obliterated any notion of off-time for round-the-clock journalists, but it was still a relief to see that the alt-weeklies I read for this installment in my regular reading list were starting off the new year strong. The Chico News & Review, whose work I have previously highlighted here, can be forgiven, […]
‘Black Flight’ out of Chicago
By 2030, Chicago’s Black population will have decreased by half a million people in 50 years.
Alternative Reality: ‘Dark Window’
Read about the inclusive beauty of Charleston’s defunct Garden and Gun Club and more, in this installment of the alt weekly reading list.
The Christmas Tape
Wendy McClure recounts how an old audio tape of holiday music becomes a record of family history, unspoken rituals, and grief.
This Week in Books: We’ve All Been Briefed
“They have washed their hands for you. / And they take the bus home.” —Jericho Brown
Judge a Book Not By its Gender
Lisa Whittington-Hill suggests there’s a distinct gender bias in celebrity memoirs. Where female celebrities are expected to expose all, male writers get to write about whatever they want.
The Hare Krishnas of Coal Country
The world is full of make-believe. Some of it is sweet, some of it is sick. It persists because we have found no other antidote for pain.
This Week In Books: I Bought Some Books
Am I ghoul for buying all these plague books?
‘I’m a Big Fan of Writing To Find Out What You Don’t Know.’
Mark Haber discusses “Reinhardt’s Garden” and its protagonist’s quest for a true understanding of melancholy: “not a feeling but a mood, not a color but a shade, not depression but not happiness either…”
