IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Thomas Hargrove is a former journalist who’s also a homicide archivist, sifting through murder records to find patterns in crime. What drives him, and what has he discovered?
(New Yorker, approx 22 mins reading time)
In August of 2010, Hargrove noticed a pattern of murders in Lake County, Indiana, which includes the city of Gary. Between 1980 and 2008, fifteen women had been strangled. Many of the bodies had been found in vacant houses. Hargrove wrote to the Gary police, describing the murders and including a spreadsheet of their circumstances. “Could these cases reflect the activity of one or more serial killers in your area?” he asked.
This story by David Ralph is about two Irish travellers who find themselves lost while on a hike abroad.
(Dublin Review, approx 23 mins reading time)
We called out to Jean-Thomas, but got nothing back but our own voices bouncing off the walls of the valley. What if he’d slipped down a gorge and snapped an ankle? Even if we could call mountain rescue there was no way a helicopter would ever get close to landing here. Geoffrey took the map from his bag, to try to locate where we were on the route — but rain had seeped through his rucksack, and now the map began to disintegrate as he unfolded it. He kicked a stone, and we watched it plummet into a void.
3. ‘Monstrous’ men and the art they make
What do we do when the art we love is created by men who have done terrible things? This fascinating and honest article takes a look.
(The Paris Review, approx 26 mins reading time)
They did or said something awful, and made something great. The awful thing disrupts the great work; we can’t watch or listen to or read the great work without remembering the awful thing. Flooded with knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome by disgust. Or … we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate the artist from the art. Either way: disruption. They are monster geniuses, and I don’t know what to do about them.
4. Harvey Weinstein’s secret settlements
The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow has been doing some stellar reporting on the Harvey Weinstein issue – here, he writes about the secret settlements used to keep women who made allegations about Weinstein stay quiet.
(The New Yorker, approx 25 mins reading time)
“I didn’t even understand almost what I was doing with all those papers,” she told me, in her first interview discussing her settlement. “I was really disoriented. My English was very bad. All of the words in that agreement were super difficult to understand. I guess even now I can’t really comprehend everything.” She recalled that, across the table, Weinstein’s attorney was trembling visibly as she picked up the pen.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad followed Iraqi soldiers around as they took part in the last push against Isis. But even though they won, there was still savagery to come.
(The Guardian, approx 48 mins reading time)
The man craned his neck and looked out of the window behind him. Below the house, a bloated, decomposed body had turned black under the scorching summer sun. He turned and smiled, but there was now a hint of fear, a loss of control. “I am just a medic,” he mumbled. Taha swung his leg back and kicked the man’s face so hard that he collapsed motionless on his back. For a second, everyone in the room thought he was dead.
Sarah Bregel writes about deciding to leave her husband – and not knowing what to do.
(Longreads, approx 15 mins reading time)
Our two small kids are downstairs watching TV. They’ve been planted there like eyes growing on the skins of potatoes for hours, and I have no plans to call to them and demand they shut it off. I can’t look at their faces for fear they might see through me. Later, I will dry my swollen eyes long enough to read bedtime stories and lay with them a while. I will say “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” I’ll close the door almost all the way then whisper through the crack, “There’s no bugs,” and slip out.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Sisters Krista and Tatiana Hogan are craniopagus conjoined twins, joined at the head. And because they share a neural bridge, scientists are examining whether the pair share a mind.
(New York Times, approx 37 mins reading time)
Suddenly the girls sat up again, with renewed energy, and Krista reached for a cup with a straw in the corner of the crib. “I am drinking really, really, really, really fast,” she announced and started to power-slurp her juice, her face screwed up with the effort. Tatiana was, as always, sitting beside her but not looking at her, and suddenly her eyes went wide. She put her hand right below her sternum, and then she uttered one small word that suggested a world of possibility: “Whoa!”
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