The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Jeremy Redmon, Alex Perry, Jeremy D. Larson, Kevin Nguyen, and Egill Bjarnason.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, our Top 5 sets an important and particularly sobering precedent. In the April 28th, 2017 edition of the Top 5, Jason Fagone’s extraordinary Huffpost Highline piece, “What Bullets Do to Bodies” was selected as number one. In light of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, this piece retains a startling relevance. It’s our number one piece this week. Editor Seyward Darby explains why. 

1. What Bullets Do to Bodies

Jason Fagone | HuffPost Highline | April 26th, 2017 | 7,799 words

I’m breaking from tradition here and highlighting a story that’s already been in one of these newsletters, and as a top pick no less. The circumstances demand it. On Tuesday, a gunman armed with two legally purchased AR-style assault rifles slaughtered 19 children and two teachers in a single classroom at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. As authorities worked to identify the victims, they asked parents to provide DNA samples. What’s unspoken in this detail is that the dead children were unrecognizable, or so mangled that it would have been an unimaginable cruelty to ask their parents to look at them. I can’t get this fact out of my mind, and it prompted me to re-read one of the best pieces of explanatory journalism in recent memory. Almost exactly five years ago, Jason Fagone spent time with the head of trauma surgery at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia to understand the damage that bullets do to bodies. What Dr. Amy Goldberg had to say about the Sandy Hook massacre could be said today about the shooting in Uvalde: “As a country, we lost our teachable moment…. The fact that not a single one of those kids was able to be transported to a hospital, tells me that they were not just dead, but really really really really dead. Ten-year-old kids, riddled with bullets, dead as doornails.” America is a country where the mass murder of children is followed by mourning and forgetting, but never action: Congress hasn’t passed a single piece of gun control legislation since Sandy Hook. Until that changes, Goldberg’s comment will be relevant again in another community, at another school. It’s only a matter of time. —SD

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Kick off your weekend with five great reads on Eurovision, West Coast road trips, the magic of alleys, the existence of demons, and an 89-year-old working cowboy named Boots.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Kerry Howley, Suzanne Cope, Micheli Oliver, Jeff Mao, and Rob Brunner.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Washington City Paper, Astra Taylor and Sunaura Taylor, Leslie Jamison, Mark Pupo, and Madeleine Aggeler.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Tamara Dean, Samanth Subramanian, Sasha Plotnikova, Steve Edwards, and Caity Weaver.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Josefa Velasquez, Wufei Yu, Tom Foster, Tim Requarth, and Ellen Ruppel Shell.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Rachel Aviv, Clare Gerada, Fatima Syed, Leslie Jamison, and Deb Olin Unferth.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Mstyslav Chernov, Deborah Cohen, Marina Benjamin, Johanna Hoffman, and Gabriella Paiella.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Sasha Archibald, Michael W. Clune, Victoria Livingstone, Danyel Smith, and Drew Magary.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week, we’re sharing stories from Jason Fagone, Shannon Gormley, Nickole Brown, Jason Kehe, and Abe Streep.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week’s Top 5 features hand-picked stories about soccer in Kyiv, the Humboldt Broncos tragedy, a CIA hacker gone rogue, Mayan astronomy, and the unexpected benefits of eye contact among musicians on stage. Here’s what editor Cheri Lucas Rowlands had to say about Wright Thompson’s ESPN portrait of Kyiv on the day the men’s national team played Scotland in a must-win World Cup semifinal match. 

1. Inside Kyiv on the Night of Ukraine’s Stunning World Cup Qualifier Victory

Wright Thompson | ESPN | June 2nd, 2022 | 4,282 words

“I came to Kyiv to watch a city watch a game,” writes Wright Thompson. And watch he does, while absorbing and documenting all he can as he wanders the capital and spends time with Ukrainians in this gem of a piece. Thompson captures the air in Kyiv on this first day of summer: the fear felt when air raid sirens go off, the tension that builds in the hour before the men’s national team plays Scotland in a must-win World Cup playoff semifinal, and the strangeness of life, of everything now. “But still there is an unspoken feeling hovering over everything, a mixture of worry that the success they’ve known so far could turn to defeat, that the destruction of war might return to Kyiv.” Everything in this piece feels raw and immediate: the scenes, the conversations, the moments. “History is being written in real time and nobody knows how things will end. These could be the last days of a regional war or the first days of a world war.” What a snapshot of this night, and a fleeting portrait of the city in a time of war. —CLR

drarryspecificrecs:

2022.04 ~ Top 10 longest fics posted on AO3

1.When Times are Direby@aibidil [E, 130k]

►Magical Britain is screwed, and it’s once again up to Harry to save it. This time, by marrying Draco Malfoy.

2.Make This Leapby@oflights [M, 118k]

►Harry owns a struggling restaurant which is running out of money, and his Head Chef has just handed in notice. He’s at a bit of a loss as to what to do until Narcissa Malfoy presents an obvious solution: bring in Draco Malfoy as Chef and part owner. Harry does.

3.Pages of Youby@wolfpants [E, 102k]

►Summer, 1980. Harry is floating between university and becoming a Real Certified Adult. He’s not ready. He really isn’t. In a desperate attempt to have the Best Last Summer ever, he takes a casual job at his godfather’s bookshop in London, starts an illicit pen pal affair with a wordy posh boy that he’s catching feelings for, all while dealing with the son of Sirius’s business rival, one Draco Malfoy, insufferable know-it-all extraordinaire. […]

4.ParoledbySita_Z [M, 83k]

►The war is over. Sentenced for his crimes, Draco Malfoy finds himself looking at several long years in Azkaban. Behind bars, Lucius and Narcissa are scheming to get their son out of prison, and they’re not above involving the Boy-Who-Lived. Harry, of course, never could say no when it comes to saving people.

5.Two Shadows in the Nightby@ubiestveritas [T, 80k]

►Five years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry returns to his old school to claim the position of DADA teacher. The way he’s been ignoring his issues and trying to live up to everyone’s impossibly high expectations is catching up to him. Will a certain blond ex-Death Eater be able to help him finally heal?

6.Echoing Greenby@thegatheringdust [E, 70k]

►Back at Hogwarts for his eighth year, Draco is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to enter a prestigious potion competition and maybe salvage his future. The only catch? He has to work with Potter. After everything they’ve been through, asking for Potter’s help seems like Draco’s worst nightmare. But as they struggle to heal old wounds, Draco begins to question everything he thought he knew about himself and about the boy who won’t stop staring at him with those terrible green eyes.

7.The Writing on The Wallbyinkycreamscone [M, 56k]

►in which Draco is an outcast, Harry is the Golden Boy, and a Muggle song scrawled on a shower wall, of all things, bridges the years of… everything between them. The only hitch is- neither of them realise who they’re communicating with as they scribble lyrics down one after the other.

8.I Wish I Could Forgetbyliterary_lion [M, 55k]

►Draco Malfoy disappears one night and Harry begins to doubt the likelihood of the quiet year at Hogwarts he had hoped for. But Harry’s suspicions are turned on their head when he discovers that Malfoy is the one who needs his help (not that the stubborn git will admit it). // A story of building and fighting for connections in the aftermath of trauma.

9.The Golden Boyby@flightinflame [M, 53k]

►A spell cast in anger exposes a secret Draco wanted kept hidden, and Harry has to try and deal with the consequences of his impulsiveness, pass his OWLs, and manage the relationship that is forming between him and the boy he assumed was his enemy.

10.Draco Malfoy the Reconstructed Slytherin Princebygokioh [T, 48k]

►Returning for his 8th year at Hogwarts; Draco must face the challenges of trying to better the Malfoy name, gain the highest grades for his N.E.W.T.s and take charge of his life again. It’s a lot harder when he now has the entirety of the Slytherin students looking at him for guidance and his friends ready and waiting for his orders.

※HONOURABLE MENTIONS :

11.The BondbyMyneighbourtodoro_ki [T, 47k]

►Harry is an auror and Draco a potioneer. A new potion is sweeping across wizarding Britain and Harry is tasked with catching the guys who are behind it. But when does any of Harry Potter’s plans go exactly as planned?

12.Heal Thyselfby@astolat [T, 46k]

►[…] “What course?” Draco said, then, “No, don’t be ridiculous,” when he realized she meant the notice pinned up on the board he’d been staring at: Applicants To The Introductory Mediwizard Course For The Coming Term Shall Present Themselves In The Chief Mediwizard’s Office By August 24th.

13.Coming to my sensesbysuhtmuikkis [T, 44k]

►Harry and Draco are forced to live together due to a spell/potion accident gone wrong. To make matters more interesting, they need to navigate a world where Harry loses one sense at a time, while Draco gets theirs heightened.

14.Once and Never AgainbyAvonne [E, 40k]

►One morning after with his sworn enemy should be enough to warn Draco that he’s going down a dangerous path. But does he learn? Of course not. Month after month, he finds himself returning to Potter’s embrace. What is wrong with him?

—

※ Word count: 1k ~ 15k

※ Word count: 15k ~ 40k

1. The Affair of Truth and Treacherybyerysichthon [E, 36k]
   
2. Affectionbyblueraven1340 [T, 34k]
   
3. all my love’s wrapped in shades of redbyasininemind [T, 15k]
   
4. any day nowby@oknowkiss [E, 16k]
   
5. Hanahakiby@ladyroxanne21 [E, 30k]
   
6. If You Tell Another SoulbyTabithaMonpress [E, 18k]
   
7. The notches in the door framebyBluemask [E, 23k]
   
8. Once More With FeelingbyInnerLilith [E, 28k]
   
9. The Snake CharmerbyRecklessHeartbeat [T, 26k]
   
10. Two Broken Halves Of A WholebyBookworm_For_Life [G, 20k]

—

Ongoing Fest/Exchange

※Fics would be listed elsewhere.

1. Drarry Spin the Wheel Fest|@drarry-spin-the-wheel-fest
   
2. HP Trans Fest 2022|@hptransfest

☕️What book are you reading this weekend?

[ig//ladyofbookshire]