ere are 21 of my favourite long-form pieces from last year, in no particular order. I’m still in awe of the fact that so much great writing is so easily accessible and available to us, a lowly order of word-hungry parasites, for free. So if you get a kick out of anything you read on this list, support the authors and publications whatever way you can, whether that’s giving them a high-five on Twitter, buying a subscription, clicking manically on their sidebar ads, or signing them up for a seven-figure publishing deal. Especially that last one.
There are 21 of them because my team of high-powered internet attorneys have advised me that even-numbered lists are now illegal.
“As you read, you slowly grow aware that the book’s real object of fascination isn’t the various sicknesses described in its pages, but the sickness inherent in their arrangement.”
Book of Lamentations by Sam Kriss
“It’s only weird because we humans are weird, and because the reasons for our comforts and pleasures are so often obscure to us.”
The Soft Bulletins by Mark O'Connell
“The brutal fact was that by the early 1970s MI5 not only had very little to do - but also its political masters were beginning to question whether it might be seriously incompetent.”
Bugger by Adam Curtis
“Who wants to be primarily known for breaking thousands of laws across a dozen states, just to beat some record that very few people care about? Worse: who wants to be known for dying in an attempt?”
Meet The Guy Who Drove Across The U.S. In A Record 28 Hours 50 Minutes by Doug Demuro
“It always seems that successive generations of entertainers, bent on laughing people out of their follies and vices, remain optimistic about the power of anti-establishment comedy at the outset of their careers: it’s only later that reality kicks in.”
Sinking Giggling into the Sea by Jonathan Coe
“His skin was paper white, in Georgia, in August. He hadn’t been out in the sun in months. Not only did he not understand the rules of baseball, he was, at the age of about 12, physically unable to throw an object.”
Go to Homeschool by Jon Bois
“No one talked about it. No one talked about how they felt after anything. It was like an unspoken agreement that you wouldn’t talk about your experiences.”
Confessions of a Drone Warrior by Matthew Power
“Litvinenko was finished. In fact, he was finished when he took that swallow of tea. There was nothing that could have been done for him. He was a dead man from that moment on. It was amazing he lasted as long as he did.”
Bad Blood by Will Storr
“While once slow and hiccupping – marred by tragedy and ugliness of all kinds – the now seemingly unstoppable movement towards legal same-sex marriages in the US and elsewhere has induced in me nothing less than joy and amazement.”
Rah, Rah, Cheers, Queers by Terry Castle
“For most boarders, the smell of the hospital and the sight of asylum wards vanished from their lives”
The Geel Question by Mike Jay
“Even though Claire is bad at cooking, and believes in false God, and dresses like prostitute, with both ankles exposed, she is not so stupid a person.”
Sell Out by Simon Rich – Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4
“I haven’t committed any of the murders I’ve been convicted of, and none of the murders I’ve confessed to, either. That’s the way it is.”
The Serial Killer Has Second Thoughts: The Confessions of Thomas Quick by Chris Heath
“This conflation of newsiness with news, share-worthiness with importance, has wreaked havoc on the media’s skepticism immune systems.”
The Year We Broke The Internet by Luke O'Neill
“At what other moment in history could a serial killer identify middle-aged white men as his most vulnerable targets?”
Murder by Craigslist by Hanna Rosin
“Traffic is interrupted, signals don’t reach their destinations, and the brain starts to quiet. Many people experience this as a contented swoon that silences inner chatter while giving a half glimpse of childhood; they are overtaken by sleep, like a three-year-old in a car seat.”
The Big Sleep by Ian Parker
“A civilization that speaks in smarm is a civilization that has lost its ability to talk about purposes at all.”
On Smarm by Tom Scocca
“The most aggressive companies will hire soft and hard scientists like myself, in addition to quantitative scientists, to optimize the exploitation of youth.”
Monetizing Children by Ramin Shokrizade
“Mushrooms are bloodthirsty. The clues are in the common names: destroying angels, devil’s boletes, poison pies, beechwood sickeners.”
Last Supper by Cal Flyn
“David Neumark, an economist at the University of California, Irvine, has shown that eight years after Wal-Mart comes to a county, it drives down wages for all (not just retail) workers until they’re 2.5 percent to 4.8 percent below wages in comparable counties with no Wal-Mart outlets. ”
The Forty-Year Slump by Harold Meyerson
“Our contemporary equivalence between the self and its ever-corrupting, malady-prone shell profoundly diminishes what it means to be a human being.”
Warning: I Will Employ the Word ‘Fat’ by Lionel Shriver
“It doesn’t matter if people are aware of how I work, or even what I’m going to do, they still won’t catch it. While they’re trying to watch for it, I’ll be watching them.”
A Pickpocket’s Tale by Adam Green
… and a bonus not-very-hidden track (please don’t tell the lawyers) in the form of my favourite essay of the year, Omens. It’s an 8,000 word monster, so make some room in your schedule for a mind-expanding romp through artificial intelligence, alien civilizations, quantum theory and the best way to survive the heat death of the universe.
“The problem is you are building a very powerful, very intelligent system that is your enemy, and you are putting it in a cage.”
Omens by Ross Anderson
