Things I’ve Been Reading

Between my daily dose of Next Draft and theSkimm, collecting pieces from The Millions,  The Paris Review, The Atlantic and The New Yorker  to read, I have a bit of a collection of articles, short stories and poetry to share. Anything I find of interest, I save to Pocket (which I highly, highly recommend) and read while I’m at the pool/beach/have five minutes to kill/pretending to be busy/etc.  and, if you’ve got anything you’ve read lately of any interest, share it in the comments. I tried as best I could to keep everything fairly coherent. Under each heading you’ll find articles or essays on that particular topic. Other than poetry, fiction and interviews. Those are exactly what the label says.  I’ve also put an asterisk next to my favourites because I’m slightly biased like that. Happy reading!

 

Creativity:

•  On Why Side Projects Should Be Stupid
•  Secrets of the Creative Brain 
• The Secret to Creativity, Intelligence, and Scientific Thinking
• The Slow Death of Purposeless Walking *
• Late Bloomers *
• Why Fostering a Fearless Culture is the Key to Groundbreaking Creative Work
• Sleep Your Way to Creativity
• The Daily Routines of Geniuses
• Fail Better
• Creativity and Madness: On Writing Through The Drugs

 

Writing:

• How to Write *
• Essaying Through Life
• Literary Characters I Would Not Invite to a Dinner Party *
• How to be a Good Bad American Girl
• What is Global Literature?
• Not Telling
• The Legend of Vera Nabokov: Why Writers Pine for a Do-It-All Spouse
• Fragmentary: Writing in a Digital Age
• Flaws Only a Protagonist Could Have *
• Right to Write
• When Literature Was Dangerous
• Are You My Mother? On Maternal Abandonment in Literature

 

Sports:

• Why the “Which is the best league in the world?” debate is stupid 
• How Concussion Put Me on the Bench for Good
• Year of the Pigskin
• The Qatar World Cup is a Human Rights Catastrophe. It’s Time to do Something About It
• Any Mumbai Sunday
• Brazil’s beautiful game: Stephanie Nolen’s quest to understand a national obsession *
• Lionel Messi Is Impossible
• 1911: Sport Odysseys | Without Their Boots On
• The Racist Redskins

 

Fiction:

• Araby by James Joyce
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer *
• Eloquent Notes of Suicide by Blessing Musariri
• California by Edan Lepucki *
• Once in a Lifetime by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Interiors by Rainer Maria Rilke **
• Not Like I Don’t Like You by Barbara Demick

 

Poetry:

• by Anne Barngrover
• by Tomaz Salamun *
• Poems (We Think) We Know: Emily Dickinson

 

Misc.:

• Star Wars and the 4 Ways Science Fiction Handles Race
• How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other
• Love and Fire 
• Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain *
• Beautiful Man: On Peter Parker and the Amazing Spider-Man
• My Childhood in an Apocalyptic Cult
• I went undercover on Ashley Madison to find out why women cheat
• Social Skills or Stereotypes? What My Autism Classes Didn’t Teach Me
• Hello, Stranger
• How We End up Marrying the Wrong People
• It Happened To Me: I Don’t Have a Best Friend
• Teaching the Camera to See My Skin *
• Lives in Letters *

 

Travel:

• Travelling While Black
• When Cultural Understanding is Just Racial Profiling

 

Interviews:

• Inspiration Information
• On New Afghan Writing
• The Last Days of Texas
• Lessons from Stephen King and “Valley of the Dolls”: Reading 100 years of Bestsellers
• Leslie Jamison and Roxane Gay: “Men are crowned as the gold standard of the genre. It’s gonna change.” *
• Stakes Is High – And Black Lives Are Worthy of Elaboration

(photo credit here)