Our Top Reading Lists

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The Longreads editors love to curate the best nonfiction stories on the web for our readers, but we are always happy to have some help! 2023 has been another year where we have published reading lists from outside contributors—on eclectic topics that range from Taylor Swift to neuroscience.

We have been lucky enough to have garnered some regular reading list authors, but we are always happy to welcome first-time listers into the fold. Our top 10 most popular lists of the year include curation from both veterans and new authors, and we are delighted to remind you of their many fantastic recommendations—get comfortable before you dive in, you may be here awhile. 

We’ll continue to commission and publish reading lists in 2024. So, if you’ve got a great idea for a list, please pitch us.

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1. A Reading List About the Neurology of Reading (Melanie Hamon, February 2023)

Seven stories exploring the surprising neuroscience behind the mutability of language and the reading brain.

2. Paging Dr. House: A Medical Mysteries Reading List (Lisa Bubert, March 2023)

In the spirit of TV’s Holmesian healer, enjoy these diagnostic digressions.

3. The Parent Dilemma: Should I have a Child? (Clare Egan, August 2023)

Clare Egan doesn’t know if she wants kids. Will this reading list help?

4. Working on the Edge: A Reading List About Extreme Jobs (Chris Wheatley, June 2023)

A livelihood is not a life—yet many risk the latter in order to create the former.

5. Not Serious People: A Succession Reading List (Chloe Walker, May 2023)

Great writing begets great writing — and the commentary around the HBO smash hit is some of the best around.

6. There She Goes: A Reading List on Women Adventurers (Ailsa Ross, April 2023)

The women you’ll find on top of the world.

7. Librarians on the Front Lines: A Reading List for Library Lovers and Realists (Lisa Bubert, September 2023)

Increasingly, being a librarian is less and less about books and more and more about community survival.

8. From Identity to Inspiration: A Reading List on Why We Run (Sheon Han, February 2023)

Sheon Han built a running habit during lockdown. In this collection, he highlights six writers’ insights on the sport.

9. Read ‘Em and Weep: A Reading List for Criers (Rachel Dlugatch, July 2023)

Grab your handkerchief and get ready for the waterworks.

10. Imperial Eras: A Taylor Swift Reading List (Jill Spivey Caddell, October 2023)

How Taylor Swift reflects every possible version of ourselves.

Explore our Best of 2023 lists

You can also browse all of our year-end collections since 2011 in one place.

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The Librarian Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore

Tania Galiñanes, a librarian at Tohopekaliga High School in Kissimmee, Florida, loves books. But with the spread of book bans across public schools in the state, she decided she’d had enough—and quit. For The Washington Post, Ruby Cramer reports on what’s happening in school libraries across the U.S., like this one, and recounts Galiñanes’ last day at work.

She was tired. Her husband was always reminding her: Tania, you have no sense of self-preservation. She had thought about pushing back against the district, had imagined putting up posters all over the walls from the American Library Association celebrating “freedom to read,” a final act before her last day on Friday. But even if she did put up the posters, who would be there to see them once she left? The library would be closed after this week, until they found someone to take her place.

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How Sandra Hüller Approached Playing a Nazi

One of Germany’s most celebrated actresses probes characters with unusual depth. But to portray a Fascist wife, in “The Zone of Interest,” she reversed her usual method—and withheld her empathy. Rebecca Mead talks to Hüller about her craft:

When Hüller was approached to play Hedwig, she was initially skeptical. “I always refused to play Fascists—which, of course, especially in international productions, come your way from time to time as a German actress,” she told me over lunch at a restaurant in Leipzig, where she lives with her twelve-year-old daughter. (Hüller is not with the girl’s father.) The neighborhood was filled with galleries and restaurants, and the pavement of its main street, Karl-Heine Strasse, was studded with Stolpersteine—memorial plaques outside buildings whose former residents were murdered in the Holocaust. We sat in a pleasant outdoor area, and Hüller’s dog, a Weimaraner mix, rested beside her on a blanket that Hüller had brought from home. (The dog appears in “The Zone of Interest” as the family pet.) “I didn’t like the idea of putting on a Nazi uniform like that, or using language like that—to get close to the energy of that, or to discover there would be fun in that,” Hüller went on. “I have seen colleagues that actually have fun doing it. Maybe it’s still in their bodies from former generations. They like to change their language and speak like that”—the tone of her voice changed, her usually soft-spoken, careful speech becoming harsh and rat-a-tat. Reverting to her own voice, she asked, “Why do they do it? They could speak like a normal person.”

Hüller also disapproves of projects that use the Nazi era as a canvas upon which to paint a dramatic story that has little to do with Fascism. (Netflix’s recent soapy drama “All the Light We Cannot See” could be considered a prime example.) She was therefore attracted to the pointed absence of drama in Glazer’s screenplay: nothing much happens beyond what we know is happening offscreen, as the murderous apparatus under Höss’s command becomes ever more efficient. She told me, “Jonathan and I had a lot of conversations about the traps in this kind of story we wanted to tell—which is not really a story. There is a couple, and one wants to leave, and the other doesn’t.

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What Happens to a School Shooter’s Sister?

Twenty-five years ago, ninth grader Kip Kinkel shot and killed his parents and then opened fire at his school, Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two teenagers and injuring 25 students. This was in 1998, before the rise of school shootings and gun violence had yet to put places like Columbine and Parkland on the map. While Kip has been in prison, he has stayed in close contact with his older sister, Kristin; she is his lifeline and the reason why Kip is still alive today. How has the tragedy affected Kristin? Has she been able to create an existence distinct from her identity as Kip Kinkel’s sister? Jennifer Gonnerman tackles a tough story.

I was surprised by her willingness to be so candid with a stranger. It seemed that part of her decision to speak with me had to do with timing—this year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of her brother’s crimes. In the past, she had worried that anything she said publicly might bring more pain to the families of the students Kip had shot, but now that a quarter century had passed she hoped this was less likely. I also sensed that her decision to tell her story was driven in large part by a desire to help her brother. He remains in prison, but they are still in close contact.

We sat down at a table together, and I asked Kip what his life would have been like if his sister had not stood by him. He answered without hesitating. “I probably wouldn’t be here,” he said. “If I didn’t have her love and support, I probably would have ended things a long time ago.”

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Tyrian Purple: The Lost Ancient Pigment That Was More Valuable Than Gold

Tyrian purple was once the most noble shade and expensive pigment of ancient times. Made from the mucus and secretions of three species of sea snails, this valuable dye was the color of “strength, sovereignty and money.” For the BBC, Zaria Gorvett writes a fascinating account of the most prized purple shade in history: its origins, its disappearance, and now its revival, thanks to a Tunisian man who has spent years replicating the dye.

Nouira, who works as a consulting manager, was immediately reminded of a story he had learned at school – the legend of Tyrian purple. He raced to the local harbour, where he found many more snails, exactly like the one on the beach. Their little spiral bodies are covered in spikes, so they often become trapped in fishermen’s nets. “They hate them,” he says. One man was plucking them out of his net and putting them in an old tomato can – which Nouira later took back to his apartment.

To begin with, Nouira’s experiment was extremely disappointing. That night, he cracked the snails open and looked for the vivid purple entrails he had seen on the beach. But there was nothing there except pale flesh. He put it all in a bag to throw away, and went to bed. The next day, the bag’s contents had undergone a transformation. “At that time, I had no clue that the purple was initially transparent – it’s like water,” he says.

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Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney?

At GQ, and now at NYT Mag, Caity Weaver is a profile artist of the highest caliber, able to approach any and everything with curiosity and an sharp, infectious enthusiasm. She’s done it with superstars; she’s done it with glitter; now, she does it with Stephanie Courtney, an actor who for 15 years has made a (very good) living as what amounts to a corporate mascot. Comedy. Ambition. Business. Dreams. Fulfillment. The concept of “enough.” Nothing is too lofty for Weaver to wrestle it onto the page, and nothing is heavy enough to keep this feature from soaring off the page and into your group chat.

If my visit to the “Superstore” set can be taken as representative, being closely involved with the production of popular TV commercials for large national brands is the best possible outcome for a human life. The scale and complexity of the operation at the center of Courtney’s work is eye-popping. Every fleeting football-game-interrupting Progressive ad is the product of hours of labor from more than a hundred people. On set, a cat wrangler stood just out of frame, ready to pounce with a backup cat if the primary cat failed. Trays of lickerish delights — crostini with prosciutto, cups of ethereal parfait — were discreetly proffered, at frequent intervals, to people scrutinizing monitors. Every lens, light and politely anxious face was turned heliotropically toward Courtney, in a rented living room, trying to remember, while delivering her line, that Progressive was offering deals “for new parents” rather than “to new parents” — a possibly meaningful distinction. This wasn’t a critically acclaimed Hulu series; there was actually a lot riding on this. It needed to be the same, but slightly different, and every bit as successful as the 200 that had come before it, so that everyone would be asked to return to this job — not necessarily, perhaps not exactly, the job of their dreams, but a better job than anyone could ever hope for, bolstered by friendly faces and fantastic catering and a sumptuous corporate budget — in perpetuity.

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Inside the Weird and Wonderful World of Miniatures

Miniatures are having a moment. This intricate art of building and furnishing tiny worlds exploded during the pandemic, and has continued to grow popular through TikTok as well as shows like Best in Miniature. For Esquire, Scott Huler immerses himself in the world of miniaturists and seeks to understand the why behind these delicate and incredibly detailed dioramas called roomboxes. Are they places in which to escape? Spaces to control? Settings to find focus, or perhaps peace? Perhaps all of the above.

This is what distinguishes miniatures: this sense that just offstage, there’s more going on if you could just get small enough to walk through that little doorway. That’s what I was looking to understand. Then Off told me something.

“I put things in drawers,” he said. “In my rooms.” Those roomboxes are behind glass. But if Off includes a table in a roombox, and that table has a drawer, well: something will be in that drawer. Pencils, a sewing kit, tools, cutlery. Nobody will ever see it. Nobody will ever know it’s there, yet putting it in there is an essential part of what Off is doing. It’s about a story. “My whole life,” he said, whether creating roomboxes or connecting with clients to sell real estate, “has been about the story.”

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