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A totally unorganized, uncategorized list of writing for a year that felt the same. Poke around, click on things you wouldn’t normally otherwise, let some thinking wash over you, save things for when you have the space. Nothing and no one’s going anywhere for now.
Durga Chew-Bose’s letter of recommendation for framing
Adrian Hon on what ARGS can teach us about QAnon
Taylor Lorenz on The Original Renegade
Sarah Miller on the grip of the diet industrial complex and the bridge dog
Dayna Tortorici on the endlessness of Instagram
Nick Estes on the tie between epidemics and colonialization
Katy Kelleher on periwinkle
Cal Newport on the rise and fall of getting things done
Alex Pareene on Madison Cawthorn and the future of the GOP
Jason Parham on TikTok and the evolution of digital blackface
John Hermann on the weird brands of Amazon
Helen McDonald, “The Mysterious Life of Birds Who Never Come Down”
Carissa M. Harris on SVU and the Problem of Justice
Nidhi Prakash on COVID longhauling and rethinking productivity
Liana Aghajanian on the place of Ferrero Rocher in immigrant families
Samin Nosrat on gardening
Allison P. Davis on living with Karens
A.O. Scott on the wonder of Wallace Stegner
Cortney Cassidy on resisting capitalism and/alongside artistic practice
Patricia Lockwood on her brain after COVID
S. Fambul on jollof rice and what else the pandemic has stolen
Lydia Kiesling on the fight for preschool for all in Portland
Ximena Larkin profiles the Dreadhead Cowboy of Chicago
Jenisha Watts, “Breonna is me and I am her.”
Jeffrey Moro makes the case for abolishing time
Maris Kreizman, “Where Did My Ambition Go?”
Jamelle Bouie, “Why Juneteenth Matters”
Venessa Wong on the continual dread of pandemic parenting
Sarah Jones on a long death at the hands of American capitalism
Hanif Abdurraqib profiles Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
Dan Kois, “When Learning Pods Came to Greenbrier Elementary”
Alice Bolin on the corporate feminism of NXIVM
Tressie McMillan Cottom on AOC
Ian Bogost on what Americans will sacrifice for the “college experience”
Seaborn Larson, “Samantha Francine Did Not Back Down”
Natasha Cloud, “Your Silence is a Knee on My Neck”
David Roth on the infinite scroll of online reading
Chloe L. Cooney on the parents are not all right
Patricia Park on taking her father’s place at the family bodega
Adam Serwer on the motivations of birtherism
Nitya Rayapati on “the health insurance plot”
Gabrielle Hamilton on the purpose of restaurants
Sarah Smarsh on arguing with Trump voters
Anna Watkins on how “lean production” has failed us
Allyn West on the Texas architecture of gentrification
Ed Yong on our pandemic spiral
Meg Conley on miscarriage in the home
Ashley Reeve on the Snapewife
Dara T. Mathis on the church’s black exodus
Dan Q. Dao on Black Lives Matter in Houston’s Vietnamese community
Natalie Lima on voice personals in the late ‘90s
Emile Duck photographs the isolated communities along the Siberian River
Kyle Chayka on the unsatisfying infomercial of The Home Edit
Casey Cep on Marilynne Robinson
Latria Graham, “Out There, No One Can Hear You Scream”
Lili Loofbourouw on political degradation
Amanda Mull on the laptop as life ruiner
Marina Koen on the rhetoric of colonization in space
Carina del Valle Schorske on Bad Bunny
Jiayang Fan on becoming Chinese propaganda
Max Read on Twitter and the death drive
Julian Brave NoiseCat on colonialism as apocalypse
Jesmyn Ward on loss upon loss
Emma Copley Eisenberg on why so few books get factchecked
Terry Nguyen on social justice Instagram slideshows
Lyz Lenz, “It Took Divorce to Make My Marriage Equal”
Kaitlyn Greenridge on the broken promise of “this, too, shall pass”
Molly Fischer on the tyranny of the millennial aesthetic
Kelli Maria Korducki on Liz Lemoning
Jessica Tilley Hoffman, Agnes and Muriel’s and All the Places I Have Loved You
Helena Fitzgerald, “Small Rooms”
Some Instagram Accounts I’ve Particularly Enjoyed This Year:
Small Purchases That Gave Me Outsized Pleasure:
These truly ridiculous depressed kiwi birds purchased after one Negroni
These boots I have worn every damn day for the last 5 months
Keeper Recipes of the Pandemic:
Everything in Melissa Clark’s Dinner
Sheet pan sausages and brussels sprouts
Tumeric black pepper chicken + asparagus
Looking forward to cooking everything in Meera Sodha’s East
Things I’m Endlessly Grateful For:
My indefatigable dogs Peggy and Steve
My partner Charlie
My mom who always alerts me to typos immediately
The friends I haven’t seen in months but who feel, miraculously, closer than ever
A house that warms quickly and the ability to do my work from it
Space and time to work and think
All of you whose subscriptions and support and curiosity and conversation make that possible. If you want to join, here’s how.
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Love this list! Thanks Anne. Your reading recommendations have made my year better. I read Long Bright River after seeing your tweet and loved it! Looking forward to more great reads in 2021.
Oh my goodness, the Sperry boots. I bought a pair when I was just barely pregnant as I was afraid of slipping on the ice. Kiddo is now 3.5 and I wore them out to play in the snow yesterday. Has to be one of my all time best purchases.