March 2012
102 posts
Gravity at the End of the World
[Fiction] Two couples, living in a “Yooper town,” dreaming of a better life:
Craig is sweet and smarter than he or anyone else gives him credit for. After a long day of work, he smells like sweat and sap. He likes to read Decadent literature, especially Oscar Wilde. I’m the only one who knows that. He doesn’t hate himself for being a Yooper boy dating a Yooper girl working a Yooper trade. We’ve been together for eleven years, since we were sophomores in high school. We had a baby once, a little girl named Emma. She had his eyes and his dimples and my smile and my temper. She died when she was four and a half—got sicker than we knew was possible and needed the kind of help people like us can never afford. Craig asks me to marry him every month or so but I don’t know how to say yes in a world where our child isn’t alive. I don’t know how to say no either. I tell him soon.
10 Great Reads About the Senses →
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tetw:
A Tetw reading list
The Blind Man Who Learned To See by Michael Finkel - A fascinating profile of a man who is helping other blind people to see using echolocation.
Mixed Feelings by Sunny Bains - How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses, and build new ones.
Sense and Sensitivity by Andrea Bartz - Is it possible that some people are wired to take in more sensory information than others, and that are our attitudes towards sensitivity are misguided?
Double Vision by Lawrence Weschler - A classic article about a pair of twins whose art unlocks the secrets of perception.
The Sniff of Legend by Karen Wright - “Human pheromones? Chemical sex attractants? And a sixth sense organ in the nose? What are we, animals?”
The Taste Makers by Raffi Khatchadourian - This trip to the heart of the flavour industry is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how modern food gets its taste.
You’ve Got Smell by Charles Platt - DigiScent is here. Will it take off, and if it does, will it be a fad or a technological revolution?
Seeing by Annie Dillard - An excellent essayist takes a personal, often abstract look inside the world of vision.
Master of Illusion by Ed Yong - How a neuroscientist from Stockholm can use mannequins, rubber arms and virtual reality to transport you outside your own body.
The Smelliest Block in New York by Molly Young - Deep in the Lower East Side, a terrible odor lurks. Where is it coming from?
Introducing Travelreads: The Best Storytelling for the Best Places in the World, Presented by Virgin Atlantic
One of the coolest things about Longreads is when someone tweets:
“I’m at the airport about to fly to San Francisco / New York / London / India / Argentina. I need some #Longreads for the trip.”
This got us thinking: What if we started gathering the best #longreads for every destination in the world?
It’s a big job, so we might as well start now. Today we’re announcing the launch of Travelreads, a new channel curated by Longreads and presented by Virgin Atlantic to help you find and share the best stories about the best places in the world.
You can find Travelreads at Longreads.com/travelreads, and you can find our curated picks on Twitter and Facebook. Share your favorite stories by tagging them #travelreads, and tell us where you want to go next.
We couldn’t be more thrilled to team up with Virgin Atlantic for this new endeavor.
For those interested in the business side of this: With Travelreads, we’re creating a sponsorship model that serves both the Longreads community and Virgin Atlantic’s community, by doing what we do best—providing a service that finds the best stuff on the web and links directly to the original publishers’ work, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Longreads.com. We think this approach works well for everyone in our community.
If you’re a brand and would like to work with Longreads, here’s more information on the services we provide. You can also drop a note to Joyce King Thomas, director of brand partnerships for Longreads.
