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.
1. Reuniting the bodies with home
Thousands of of illegal immigrants have died attempting to cross the southern US border. A group of college students have made it their mission to reunite them with their families who lost them – but it’s not an easy task.
(Boston Globe, approx 30 minutes reading time, 6160 words)
Typically, sheriff’s officials said, smugglers drop off immigrants before the Border Patrol checkpoint on Highway 281 in Falfurrias and instruct them to hike through the ranches, often for days, to the other side of the checkpoint. Smugglers, known as coyotes, or guias in Spanish, are supposed to pick up the immigrants on the other side and take them to Houston or another destination. Some coyotes show up, but others don’t, leaving immigrants to fend for themselves.
An anonymous journalist writes about her experiences in Kyiv, where she visitedc to write about the post-revolutionary city. She gets in touch with a ‘very respected journalist’ – but instead of becoming a peer, he subjects her to an assault.
(Balkanist, approx 22 minutes reading time, 4424 words)
I was halfway through talking about the political situation in Britain when the Very Respected Journalist called me “baby” (really, people can say that without irony?) and shoved his beer-and-whisky-churned-together tongue down my throat. After unironically ‘baby’-ing me a few more times, the Very Respected Journalist pushed me towards his bedroom. And suddenly the authority and presumed ‘expertness’ ever-present in his writing contorted itself, with the grotesqueness of a Francis Bacon painting, to a wholly new context.
Helen DeWitt writes about being stalked. It’s a chilling story about living in fear.
(London Review of Books, approx 20 minutes reading time, 4101 words)
Desperate plans for escape. Solution probably found. Ideally wd get taxi for 7 a.m. & clear out but I think it’s too complicated. Best plan, ride bike to B’b, collect things later. Perhaps in disguise.First thing, to get away.I will get to a place of safety.Not thinking of work, only of disguise & whether possible.This may not be entirely sane.
4. What I learned when I took a homeless woman shopping
If you were given €50 and taken shopping, what would you buy? And how would this change if you were homeless? Brooke McLay finds out.
(Babble, approx 8 minutes reading time, 1685 words)
She gratefully accepted the cash, tucking it gently into her purse.“Here’s the thing,” she explained. “We can’t have anything perishable in the shelter. So, the girls never get enough fruits or vegetables. We don’t have a stove or a fridge. I don’t want you to think I’m buying bad things. I just don’t have a way to keep the good things.”
Mark O’Connell is a father. He’s also a pessimist. When his son was born, he realises he is bringing new, innocent life into a world rife with danger. Can he reconcile this with the love for his new child?
(New York Times magazine, approx 12 minutes reading time, 5276 words)
I was recently sorting out the tottering obelisk of books on my bedside table when I took note of the absurd irony of three consecutively stacked volumes. One was Cioran’s “The Trouble With Being Born,” the pale-yellow spine of which was sandwiched between two much more colorful titles: “Dora Goes to the Dentist!” and “Little Blue Truck.” Those two were the property of my son, who was brought into the world 16 months ago, premeditatedly and in cold blood, by my wife and I. The intertextual incongruity of this little stack of books struck me as a comically blunt symbol for some deep and unresolved inconsistency in my life.
Slack is a new programme that aims to make communication between teams easier. Mat Honan meets the man behind the hyped-up start-up, who grew up in a village of hippies, changed his name from Dharma to Stewart, and was a co-founder of Flickr.
(Wired, approx 37 minutes reading time, 7417 words)
It was precisely the kind of thing a philosophy major who spent his childhood on a commune without running water or electricity might come up with. “I related to the whole hippie, acid-test confluence of the early Internet,” Stewart says, looking up at the vast empty space overhead in the Slack office. “The idea that we should be open and interoperate with our data resonated with me.”
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Adam Higginbotham meets billionaire Richard Branson as he turns 50. He’s taken on a hot air balloon ride and endures some not so easy chats.
(The Independent, approx 37 minutes reading time, 7417 words)
With his ballooning and his boating exploits, he has become one of the most famous men in Britain. But his public ubiquity owes more to his game dedication to picking up pretty girls and capering about in fancy dress to promote his businesses – as Long John Silver; a Zulu warrior; Elvis; in a Victorian bathing costume; in a wedding dress; in his pants; naked.
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