perfect reads

One thing that gives me a high is reading something so well written that it makes me think – “wish I could write one sentence like that”. Books are the main course, but choosing a good one feels like a finding a perfect match these days. One other source of such joy is long form essays. Not fiction (yes – there are such good short stories), not news or analysis ideally. Personal stories, blog types.

I asked Grok AI yesterday to give me five recommendations of latest good essays or articles published, since it has access to what people are sharing and liking in X/twitter. First it gave me news, then some billboard music analysis, some about sports and none anywhere near good.

I used to discover such through a few sources – but it is like digging for diamonds, one might find a perfect piece rarely. Hacker News (HN) is one – but it is mostly technical articles, with occasional non technical reads coming up top. Longreads is another, but often has American overdose and I felt I need some diverse views. Lobsters is a HN clone, guess started by people who got fed up with HN algorithm, but mostly technical reads. I have Feedly – Keep up with the topics and trends you care about – with blog subscriptions collected over the years, that I sift and sort once in a blue moon.

I had subscribed to a whatsapp group called “Food for thought – Daily Read” which shares one good read every day. Other than all these, the best source was people in Twitter/X for some time, until that community scattered post covid (one of the best souls there passed away during Covid), post Musk exodus to Threads/Bluesky/Mastodon and algorithms scrambled.  

Of late I came across antislop – 5 links every day, no infinite scroll, the links change every day. This would have been the perfect one yet, except the links tend to be “self help” / “motivational” many times. Still it has found a permanent bookmark on my Chrome homepage.

What I would ideally like – 5 or fewer links every day, non fiction, personal writing, quality of the writing being the most important factor. Maybe some day I could create this as a community app.

I wanted to pull up a few examples. First one on top of my mind was something I read years ago, all I remembered was that it was about some bird maybe like stork, migratory and related to a breakup. I couldn’t find the link in any notes I had. Asked Google exactly like this, it started giving me migratory bird related articles. Pushed its AI mode 3-4 times that it is probably from sites like latimes or sfgate or such. It found the article suddenly - The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser, a 2019 article that went viral. So here goes, a few examples –

1. The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser – I would be jealous of people who read this for the first time. I had listened to someone talking about an experience, that they wanted to share since someday somewhere someone would go through similar and wonder if what they feel is weird, and coming across another person going through the same would help them identify and process the same feeling. If it helps that one person, then it would have been worthwhile. This article might have hit a chord with many people since many suppress their needs, resolved to want less, but having someone break free of that without guilt would have been satisfying.
2. An app can be a home-cooked meal – a sort of semi technical one, but it made a lot of sense to me that we could have a shared piece of software that is like home cooked, for only the family or friends, exactly as we like it.
3. How To Remember Anything Forever-ish – a different type. It introduced “Spaced Repetition” as a technique to remember things. I try and apply this in some shape or form ever since. Making notes, revising notes, finding ways to dig up old notes to rehash, creating my own small apps to bring up old notes that I want to remember.
4. Benevolent sexism: a feminist comic explains how it holds women back | Comics and graphic novels | The Guardian – yet another, not so much of an article, but a comic/article. I didn’t know this and it did change my perspectives somewhat.
5. Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn's - Bill Watterson – this is not an essay, but a graduation speech. I am a Calvin Hobbes fan and Bill Watterson is an extremely unique author. I keep this speech as an occasional reminder of a free spirit.
6. The Inner Ring - CS Lewis Society of California – another speech, author of the book Narnia among others. Again a concept that once we know of, we see it everywhere. How there are different rings in any society or community or organization and our need to keep entering the inner rings might poison and change us in that urge to fit in.
7. Are you serious? - by visakan veerasamy – a new age one, someone who is terminally online, wide thinker, connector of ideas and people. Exploring a topic like this to the depths is the kind of thing I need.
8. “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” by Anthony Bourdain | The New Yorker – a classic which might have kicked off the next phase of Anthony Bourdain’s journey, from a chef to a traveler and storyteller.
9. What's going on here, with this human? - Graham Duncan Blog – one could rethink hiring or getting hired after reading this.  
10. Reality has a surprising amount of detail – another which made me search for this author. That there is a lot of nuance in the world, to everything we do, if we teach ourselves to notice.