Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *
The New Yorker
Posted inGuest Pick, Nonfiction
Two Stories by Rachel Aviv About Parents, Children, and Our Legal System
“You’re not showing any remorse, Dakotah. I’m not saying it in a bad way, but is something wrong with your head? Do you have problems with thinking? I mean, because you’re a very intelligent young man.” Steve told him to imagine what would happen “if you weren’t my kid, and I was in this room […]
Posted inUncategorized
‘Alice Munro Writes So Well About Secrets’
Then he had things to tell her about himself. The fact that he had produced a condom did not mean that he was a regular seducer. In fact, she was only the second person he had gone to bed with, the first being his wife. He had been brought up in a fiercely religious household […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
John McPhee on One Word You Couldn't Publish in The New Yorker
Fuck, fucker, fuckest; fuckest, fucker, fuck. In all my days, I had found that four-letter word—with its silent “c” and its quartzite “k”—more shocking than a thunderclap. My parents thought it was a rhetorical crime. Mr. Shawn actually seemed philosophical about its presence in the language, but not in his periodical. My young daughters, evidently, […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When Your Kid Has a Disease No One’s Ever Heard About
In The New Yorker, Seth Mnookin reports about what one couple, Matt Might and Cristina Casanova, did when they discovered that their son had a rare condition that no doctor had ever heard about. We featured Might’s account of his family’s search to diagnose his son’s disease in 2012.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Solitude, and the Contrast Between the Outside World and Our Inner Selves
There can be something enjoyable, even revelatory about that feeling of self-protection, which is why we seek out circumstances in which we can feel more acutely the contrast between the outside world and our inner selves. Woolf was fascinated by city life—by the feeling of solitude-on-display that the sidewalk encourages, and by the way that […]
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist. Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox. * * *
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Brian Eno and the Power of Negative Ambition
Though Eno drew and painted at both Ipswich and Winchester, he left school with no plans to become a fine artist. “I thought that art schools should just be places where you thought about creative behavior, whereas they thought an art school was a place where you made painters,” he said later. “I think negative […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Tim Howard Doesn't Enjoy Soccer Games
“In goal, you’re taking in all the movement, all the runs,” Howard said. “You see everything. You’re yelling. You’re tense. You’re so wired-in. To tell you the truth, I don’t enjoy the game—I’ve never actually had fun within the course of those ninety minutes.” Because the object is always a shutout—a “clean sheet,” as the […]