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What I Learned by Reading 31 Longreads in 31 Days
Now that I’ve wrapped up my 31 Longreads in 31 Days challenge, here are some thoughts, observations, and takeaways from the experience. 1. Longform nonfiction is alive and well With the collapse of the magazine industry and the shrinking newspaper business, many have suggested that longform nonfiction feature writing is a dying genre, with business…
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“The Loved Ones” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 31)
The best narrative nonfiction tells true stories with the crafts and elements of a short story, and that’s exactly what Tom Junod delivers in “The Loved Ones,” published in the September 2006 issue of Esquire. It looks at the tragedy at St. Rita’s nursing home in New Orleans, where 35 residents died in the floods…
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“The Truck Stop Killer” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 30)
The Truck Stop Killer by Vanessa Veselka in the November 2012 issue of GQ is the account of a woman’s search to uncover the history of the death of a hitchhiker left in a truck-stop dumpster. The body may have been connected to a series of young women kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by a serial…
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“Atonement” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 29)
There is a simplicity to Dexter Filkins’ Atonement in the October 29, 2012 issue of The New Yorker: a company of Marines got into a firefight and wound up killing a number of civilians, including many members of the Kachadoorian family. Ten years later, one of the men in that company tries to find them…
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“The Trading Desk” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 28)
Michael Lewis is a prolific nonfiction writer, author of The Big Short, Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, as well as hundreds of articles for The New Republic, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times. The Trading Desk, which appeared in the March 30, 2003 edition of the New York Times Magazine, was adapted from…
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“How David Beats Goliath” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 27)
As I near the end of this 31 Longreads in 31 Days challenge, I’d be remiss if I didn’t focus on at least one story by one of my favorite nonfiction writers, Malcolm Gladwell. I dissected his story on dogfighting a few years ago on this blog. Another impressive Gladwell story is How David Beats…
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“Looking for Someone” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 26)
I’m an admitted Nick Paumgaten fanboy, already having raved about his story on elevators and, more recently, for this series, his story on commuters. So as I worked through my pile of longreads, I read his 10,300-word examination of online dating: Looking for Someone published in the July 4, 2011 issue of the New Yorker.…
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“The Hacker is Watching” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 25)
From increasingly powerful mobile phones to free FaceTime or Skype video chats to inexpensive GPS navigation tools, we’re living in a time where a lot of science fiction of our childhoods has become reality. For tech geeks like me, we live in a golden age. We’re instantly connected with the rest of the world in…
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“A Life After Wide Right” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 24)
I’ve always felt in awe of field goal kickers at any level, when the game comes down to a final kick, the hopes of both teams hanging on the outcome of the swing of their leg. It’s hard to imagine the pressure they face, knowing that a thousands of fans are watching in the stadium,…
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“Embedded with the Reenactors” (31 Longreads in 31 Days, Day 23)
Longform nonfiction often answers the question: “Why do those people do that?” Embedded with the Reeanactors by Nick Kowalczyk, posted January 8, 2012 at Salon.com, takes a look at the thousands of Americans who dress up in period costume and re-enact old wars. Kowalczyk not only follows a group of men who re-enact the almost-forgotten…