FULL STOP: Today, we’re flooded with stories via the internet — on personal Tumblrs, Facebook and Twitter statuses, the abundance of magazines and newspapers that make their content free online. With so many narratives all around us, why do we still read (and pay for) novels? “Oh I’m fairly certain we… don’t any more. We […]
Books
Posted inFirst Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction, Story
‘I’m One of the Others Now’: What Life Was Like for a Family in East Germany
“What had driven us apart? What was so important that it had turned us into strangers, even today?”
Posted inFirst Chapters, Member Pick, Nonfiction
‘I’m One of the Others Now’: What Life Was Like for a Family in East Germany
“What had driven us apart? What was so important that it had turned us into strangers, even today?”
Posted inNonfiction, Story
How One Magazine Shaped Investigative Journalism in America
The following story comes recommended by Ben Marks, senior editor for Collectors Weekly: Doris Kearns Goodwin’s most recent history, The Bully Pulpit, chronicles the intertwined lives of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, often in excruciating detail, from Roosevelt’s struggles with the bosses of his Republican party to the fungal infections that plagued Taft’s groin. […]
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
How to Cure Reader's Block
Of course now there are books on tape so people who have trouble with their eyes in any way — having the book come in through the eyes — have an alternative. I would say another alternative is to try an author who works very slowly on the sentence level. Some examples are Samuel Beckett, […]
Posted inFirst Chapters, Nonfiction, Story
‘There Is Nothing New in Wall Street’: A Stock Trader’s Life in the 1920s
Edwin Lefèvre | Reminiscences of a Stock Operator | 1923 Our latest Longreads First Chapter comes recommended by Michelle Legro: Long before the “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort made his first million or snorted his first line of cocaine, turn-of-the-century trader Jesse Livermore, the “Great Bear of Wall Street,” accumulated over $100 million short-selling stocks before the […]
Posted inFirst Chapters, Nonfiction
‘There Is Nothing New in Wall Street’: A Stock Trader’s Life in the 1920s
Edwin Lefèvre | Reminiscences of a Stock Operator | 1923 Our latest Longreads First Chapter comes recommended by Michelle Legro: Long before the “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort made his first million or snorted his first line of cocaine, turn-of-the-century trader Jesse Livermore, the “Great Bear of Wall Street,” accumulated over $100 million short-selling stocks before the […]
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
How to Forgive Yourself
“I’ve never forgiven myself. I think eventually you realize that it’s just another form of self-indulgence to keep beating the shit out of yourself so you sort of try not to. If you fuel all of that guilt you’re going to be the guy who walks into a room who radiates self-loathing, which God knows […]
Posted inNonfiction
Longreads Best of 2013: 22 Outstanding Book Chapters We Featured This Year
This year we featured not only the best stories from the web, but also great chapters from new and classic books. Here’s a complete guide to every book chapter we featured this year, both for free and for Longreads Members:
Posted inPodcasts, Quotes
Writers and the Fear of Failure
“Failure was something that these novelists all kept talking about, which is a weird thing with the Nobel Prizes and endowed teaching positions and everything. It’s easy to look at them and think, you’re establishment; but most of them, I think, if they are any good, still see themselves as outsiders. They still feel like […]