Recommending memorable pieces by Seth Freed Wessler, Stuart McGurk, Jon Mooallem, Ben Lerner, Kiese Laymon, and Amelia Tait.
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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we are featuring stories from Liam Taylor, Piers Gelly, Christopher Cox, Anna Russell, and Lisa Russ Spaar.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending excellent stories from Lewis Hyde, Reeves Wiedeman, Sam Myers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and David W. Brown.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week we are featuring stories from Mark Follman, Scott Stossel, Wei Tchou, Sara Franklin, and Alexander Sammon.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories by Jenny Kleeman, Lucy Schiller, Michael Gardner, Emily Raboteau, and Angie Martoccio.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories from Elizabeth Kolbert, Joshua Hammer, Tan Tuck Ming, Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, and Atossa Araxia Abrahamian.
Loneliness, Power, and the Top 5 of the Week
“I want to be left alone, but I don’t want to be lonely.” Hanif Abdurraqib writes this about a tension that dominated the career of singer Phyllis Hyman—but it also feels like a familiar plea in this dim, early-January week, when many of us leave the chaos of extended family and drift back into our own homes, our own jobs, and perhaps our own small pockets of solitude.
A Friend Named Arthur and The Week’s Top 5
“But now I like to imagine him in Paris, sitting at a café, drinking an espresso, his notebook open, full of notes and poetry. It’s easy to picture in my mind. He’d look perfect there.” Four years ago, Kevin Sampsell lost his friend Arthur to suicide. He started writing about him three years ago—but the […]
On the Hollow Highs of Hallmark Holiday Films (and More)
“Filmmakers use a character’s grief to evoke viewers’ sympathy and cravings for a quick fix. The Christmas widower trope exploits these very human tendencies, triggering sadness for the sake of sadness and making the cheap promise of a neat resolution tied up in a pretty bow.” We hope you enjoyed last week’s story, “Christmas on […]
Pawns, Puppet Heads, and Paranoia: An Eccentrics Reading List
“They’re a little eccentric” is a phrase I suspect most of us have heard used to describe a certain kind of memorable person. For me, it evokes my childhood dentist — an elderly man who favored colorful bow ties and humming loudly as he worked, and who once wagged his finger in my face and […]


