Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. Feeling misunderstood has been the bane of teen angst for millennia, fodder for pop-punk anthems, and the basis of existential crises. Here, four people delve into the facets of their lives that don’t jibe […]
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Reading List: The Reality of Rape Culture
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. As long as society in general and the American legal system in particular continue to perpetuate rape culture, cases like the horrific events in Maryville will keep happening. Educate yourselves. 1. “Nightmare in Maryville: […]
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Reading List: The Culture of Cosplayers
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. For cosplayers, dressing up isn’t just once a year on Halloween. It’s part of a complex identity and community lifestyle. 1. “Cosplayers are Passionate, Talented Folks. But There’s a Darker Side to this Community, […]
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Reading List: What We Believe
Emily Perper is a word-writing human working at a small publishing company. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker. This week’s reading list explores religious understanding and our different beliefs. 1. “Your Belief Here.” (Joelle Renstrom, Killing the Buddha, October 2013) Renstrom’s cross-wearing Christian classmates didn’t understand her agnostic Unitarian beliefs, which blend […]
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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 […]
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The Notorious MSG’s Unlikely Formula For Success
In 1968, an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine wondered if eating food in American Chinese food restaurants caused feelings of numbness and fatigue. Decades of research has shown little consensus on whether consumption of MSG is bad for us. How the MSG myth was born and propagated: “‘The Chinese food causes thirst,’ […]
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To Steal a Mockingbird?
According to a lawsuit, Harper Lee’s agent Samuel Pinkus duped the To Kill a Mockingbird author to assign him the copyright to her only book. An investigation into Lee’s fight to regain the book’s copyright, which continues to earn millions of dollars in royalties: “His first move was to obtain the copyright to To Kill […]
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Why Is Science Behind a Paywall?
Why is scientific research still stuck in a model that requires that work be published in a small number of journals owned by a small number of companies? “Companies like Elsevier developed in the 1960s and 1970s. They bought academic journals from the non-profits and academic societies that ran them, successfully betting that they could […]
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My Top 5 #Longreads on the Business of Film, Music and Books
Longreads’ Mark Armstrong on Steven Soderbergh’s “State of the Cinema” and four other recommended stories about the movie, music and publishing industries.
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On the Business of Literature
What we can learn about the future of books from its past: “Publishing is a word that, like the book, is almost but not quite a proxy for the ‘business of literature.’ Current accounts of publishing have the industry about as imperiled as the book, and the presumption is that if we lose publishing, we […]
