Julia Wick is a native Angeleno who writes about literature, Los Angeles, and cities. She is currently finishing an Urban Planning degree at USC. Read her picks from Tablet Magazine, The New Yorker, and more.
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How My Aunt Marge Ended Up in the Deep Freeze
A strange real-life murder inspires a new film starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine. How does the victim’s real family feel about being the subject of a black comedy? “I was living in Los Angeles when Aunt Marge was murdered in 1996 and hadn’t been to Carthage, where I was born, in quite a few […]
The Bohemians: The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature
Ben Tarnoff | The Bohemians, Penguin Press | March 2014 | 46 minutes (11,380 words) Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) For our Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share the opening chapter of The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, the book by Ben Tarnoff, published by The Penguin Press.
Longreads Best of 2012: Emily M. Keeler
Emily M. Keeler is a writer and the founding editor of Little Brother Magazine. Best Pair of Essays on Loneliness Emily Cooke, “The Lonely Ones” – The New Inquiry Susan Sontag is a force that continues to be reckoned with, and the publication of her second volume of journals this year occasioned this incredible piece. […]
Playlist: 5 Podcast Episodes on the History of Hip-Hop
Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life, a frequent longreader, and a fan of podcasts. 1. How Hip-Hop Works (Stuff You Should Know, 52:13) In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, hosts Chuck and Josh discuss the history of hip-hop, from The Sugar Hill Gang to the present. They add their own […]
The Bohemians: The San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature
Ben Tarnoff | The Bohemians, Penguin Press | March 2014 | 46 minutes (11,380 words) Download .mobi (Kindle) Download .epub (iBooks) For our Longreads Member Pick, we’re thrilled to share the opening chapter of The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature, the book by Ben Tarnoff, published by The Penguin Press.
Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Here are our favorite stories of the week. Kindle and Readmill users, you can also save them as a Readlist. 1. Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet Amanda Hess | Pacific Standard | January 6, 2014 | 28 minutes (7,188 words) Women who are harassed online through social media sites like Twitter and in […]
Longreads Best of 2013: Here Are All 49 of Our No. 1 Story Picks From This Year
Every single story that was chosen as No. 1 this year.
A recent college graduate, she was jailed briefly for trying to skip out on her dinner tab in Malibu, then freed in the middle of the night in a neighborhood far from home. She had no car, no ride, no phone, and no money. When she disappeared, it raised a flurry of questions about how […]
And so began the improbable last chapter in the fall of a major newspaper, as chronicled by O’Shea in The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers. Among other things, the book is a reminder that whenever you think things can’t get worse, they can. They can get much, much […]

