Susan J. Palmer | University of Toronto Press | 2001 | 38 minutes (9,328 words)
The below article comes recommended by Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick, and we’d like to thank the author, Susan J. Palmer, for allowing us to share it with the Longreads community. Read more…
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Janet Fitch | White Oleander, Little, Brown and Company | 1999 | 19 minutes (4,640 words)
Our latest first chapter comes from Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick, who has chosen Janet Fitch’s 1999 novel White Oleander. If you want to recommend a First Chapter, let us know and we’ll feature you and your pick: hello@longreads.com. Read more…
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Cris Beam | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | August 2013 | 23 minutes (5,787 words)
Below is the opening chapter of To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care, by Cris Beam, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Julia Wick. Thanks to Cris and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sharing it with the Longreads community.
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Joel F. Harrington | The Faithful Executioner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | March 2013 | 15 minutes (3,723 words)
Below is an excerpt from the book The Faithful Executioners, by Joel F. Harrington, which was recently featured as a Longreads Member Pick. Thanks to our Longreads Members for making these stories possible—sign up to join Longreads to contribute to our story fund.
Read more from Harrington on how the book came together. Read more…
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Longreads Pick
The writer and her husband, who live in the Sans Bois Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, deal with a rattlesnake problem:
“Nineteen-year-old Faith comes in the door after a bit, hunting her camera. ‘There’s a snake coiled in the yard,’ she says, her voice remarkably calm. Little eight-year-old C.C. marches to the living room, stands in front of my snake-phobic mom, and announces: ‘There’s a big snake in the yard, Grandma. We think it’s a rattling one.’
“Daddy is up from his easy chair and out the door like a shot. I hurry around trying to locate my phone to take pictures while the rest of the family troops out to see it—except for my mother, of course, who wouldn’t go out there on a dare.
“By the time I reach the porch, the rattler has uncoiled and begun crawling away from the house toward a flat nest of sandstone slabs and boulders beside the pond path. I catch a glimpse of it gliding rapidly through the dead grass, its diamond markings mottled, but distinct. Its size is almost beyond belief: even winding S-like that way, the rattler is longer and thicker than any I’ve ever seen.”
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Published: Sep 3, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,998 words)
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Jon Mooallem | Wild Ones, Penguin Press | May 2013 | 11 minutes (2,605 words)
Below is the opening chapter of Jon Mooallem’s book Wild Ones, as recommended by Maria Popova. Read more…
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Longreads Pick
From the opening chapter of Jon Mooallem’s book Wild Ones, as recommended by Maria Popova, a look at the lengths we go to preserve the animal kingdom:
“At the furthest, most mundane reaches of this almost incomprehensibly sprawling program to protect the fish, the government has even hired ordinary Americans—retirees, housewives, at least one moonlighting concert clarinetist—to work as census takers in a cramped office inside the dam, several stories down, staring through an underwater window to count each and every fish that swims past the glass, an average of 4.5 million fish every year. On the morning I visited, a rail-thin woman named Janet was sitting at an old-fashioned metal desk, six hours into her eight-hour shift, scrunching her eyes with unshakable concentration as fish dribbled by the window one at a time, or swarmed through in rapid-fire mobs. Janet frequently dreams about counting fish, she told me. Once, she sat straight up in bed next to her husband and screamed, ‘Did you see the size of that one?'”
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Published: Sep 3, 2013
Length: 10 minutes (2,605 words)
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Longreads Pick
Four men make an attempt to break a world record by rowing from Senegal to Miami, Fla.:
“At the end of January, just 200 kilometres into the journey, the team is rowing in a wild nighttime sea when a rogue wave the size of a small house hoists their boat, tosses it into a valley and crashes over it. The force of the water snaps one of the oars in Kreek’s hand. Equipment flies overboard, but the moon and stars offer enough light for him and Hanssen to frantically recover as many objects as they can. Two weeks later, in daylight, another wave breaks one of Kreek’s oars. It’s their last spare. Being thrashed by the Atlantic is terrifying and Kreek slips into shock. He goes cold, crawls into the cabin and falls asleep for four hours. ‘You have to come to terms with the fact that you’re this tiny little thing that can be eaten by the ocean at any moment,’ Pukonen says.”
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Published: Aug 6, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,501 words)
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Our recent Longreads Member Pick by National Magazine Award winner Andrew Corsello from GQ is now free for everyone. Special thanks to our Longreads Members for helping bring these stories to you—if you’re not a member, join us here.
“My Body Stopped Speaking to Me,” is a personal story about Corsello’s near-death experience, first published in GQ in 1995. Read more…
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Longreads Pick
The writer investigates why endangered monk seals are being killed in Hawaii:
“‘This place should be crawling with monk seals!’ Robinson said as we got out to explore one bluff. ‘Something’s awfully wrong here. Awfully wrong.’
“Dana Rosendal, the pilot for the family’s helicopter company, was unfazed. We’d covered only a quarter of the island, he told Robinson, and we’d already seen 10 seals.
“‘Dana,’ Robinson cut in, ‘we’ve only seen five or six, plus one lousy turtle.’
“Rosendal ticked off each sighting, then counted up his fingers. Ten, exactly.
“‘Well, whoop dee do!’ Robinson shot back. ‘Ten seals!'”
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Published: May 8, 2013
Length: 32 minutes (8,010 words)
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