It’s taken me 1000 days to read through this latest batch of 250 Longform articles. From that pool, 25 can be confidently tagged ‘Superb‘. All listed below with links and brief explanation on what each longform is about.
This brings the total running tally of LFAs read, since this project kicked off in 2016, to 1000 longform essays. I have blogged 4 times earlier on this ongoing, no deadline project. In those posts I had nominated the best 75 LFAs from 750 read. Post 1 here. Post 2 here. Post 3 here. Post 4 here. This latest 25 ‘BestOf‘ LFAs from 250 read 1000 days, brings the tally of ‘winners’ to a clean 100 from a total pool of 1000. Links to all 100 are in the 5 posts.
All 25 essays here below have links embedded. I can vouch a few will change your life if you read them. If you need some convincing try this gem as an appetizer. It’s one of the winners and makes a persuasive arguement for essays.
I also did some digging to see if there was a trend or pattern to who and what I was leaning towards in my recent reads. I meta-tagged the 250 LFAs on what they were about and then generated a wordcloud to see what I was mostly reading about and around. Data says I am all over the place. And that relieved me. The fact I cannot zero in one one subject I seem to be obsessed with/about agrees with one of my core tenets. Reading in a narrow lane is detrimental to the goal of being a true well rounded reading flaneur.
Auto generated wordcloud from the themes of my reading above
And was there any particular person(s) I favored in the latest tranche of 250 ? Data says there was a distinct preference in my reading for the following writers I have listed below ⬇. Looking at them a second wave of relief washed over me. I think I am reading some sharp, smart, good thinkers and writers so I am really pleased about this reveal. And I also realized in this tranche I am quite partial towards anything that helps me better understand the soul sapping culture war we are all in. And lastly, a few of the essays here are under 3000 words but they pack more punch than some 10000 word blahs that barely registered. Case in point – Didions essay on Self Respect.
Here then are my favourite writers off late. I will read pretty much anything they write without a moments hesitation:
Paul Graham is an English computer scientist, essayist, entrepreneur, investor, and author. 7 (!) of the best 25, from a wide pool of 250 decent essays read, were written by Paul.
Scott Alexander Siskind is a prolifc blogger and psychiatrist. He is the author of the blogs Slate Star Codex (SSC) and its successor Astral Codex Ten (ACX). He would get Vote #1 for ‘Living Geniuses I read‘ (now that Hitchens is dead). He writes about pretty much anything and everything but I am a big fan of his punchy book reviews. His essays are dense but have high payoffs. And he’s written one of those few ‘shook my being’ essays.
Ben Thompson is an American business, technology, and media analyst, who is based in Taiwan. He is the author of Stratechery, a newsletter featuring commentary on tech and media news. Through his essays understanding the technology landscape is made a much easier task.
Howard Marks is an American investor and writer. He is the co-founder and co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, the largest investor in distressed securities worldwide. Warren B writes once a year. Mark fills the gap and writes every few weeks and every newsletter is a masterclass in how to think about markets, investing and risk.
Andrew Sullivan is a British-American author, editor, and blogger. Sullivan is a political commentator and his essays on the zietgiest are sharp, witty and a great lense to understand the hellish morass that is the current news cycle.
Morgan Housel is an financial blogger and an expert on behavioral finance and history. He was a former finance columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal and now his essays hosted on Callab Fund are masterclasses on how to approach life and money.
Ok. Enough with the throat clearning. Here are the goods :
The Age of the Essay, written 2 decades ago, makes a superb case for why this medium is so potent and reinforced to me why reading it is such a pleasure, especially when the job is done by a true artist of the medium. Like Paul.
‘How to Think for Yourself’ is a brilliant primer on how to innoculate yourself as an independent-minded thinker in the midst of this NPC plague where everyone parrots their party line.
‘How People Get Rich Now’ is an essay by Paul Graham where he explains what changed from how people got rich earlier and why this is so. A great essay for anyone interested in wealth building or creating the next unicorn or both.
‘How to Make Wealth’ , also by Paul Graham can be read as a prequel/sequel to the above essay. They were written 17 years apart by blend well as a duo in helping understand wealth as a phenomenon and how to approach theart of accumulating it.
‘How to work hard’ explains the right attitude you need to bring to the hard work trope. This essay revised my thinking of the cliched concept and approach. Another Paul Graham winner.
How to Do Great Work is a recent essay that is destined to be a classic. Graham fastidiously walks the reader through the entire concept and implementation of this hard to reach, hard to teach concept. Long but oh so well out.
Heresy . Up till about 1985 the overton window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would have expected freedom of expression to continue to increase. Instead it has decreased. Paul dives into why this is so.
Book Review: The Man From The Future (John von Neumann). Scott Alexander reviews the book The Man From The Future, by Ananyo Bhattacharya, to gawk at an extreme human specimen, maybe the smartest man who ever lived. Gawk along with him in this fantastic essay. We need a dozen Neumanns now more than ever.
Book Review: Fussell On Class is a summary and commentary on Paul Fussell’s “Class: A Guide Through The American Status System”. As a resident and citizen of Britain, the country that invented and later perfected it, this book review by Scott does a great job delving into the phenomenon.
Book Review: Bobos In Paradise is another book review by Scott, that pairs beautifully with the above Fussell review, on examing the genesis of the today’s upper class.
Why aren’t smart people happier? is an essay that aims to answer modern day philosopher Naval’s twist to the platitudinal question. “If you are so smart why aren’t you happy?” . This essay tries, tried hard and gives the reader some decent grub for thought.
Writing In Public, Inside Your Company is an essay I wish I had read the moment I started my corporate career 22 years ago. A superb longform that guide on how to write well inside the workplace.
The Purpose of Writing and the lost art of thinking goes well with the above essay and here Sven makes a fantastic case for why and how Writing clarifies and sharpens your thoughts in a way that is superior to merely articulating them in a conversation. Bonus : this is a short essay.
The Turn is another short essay. I still added it in here because it a superb one. The author writes about why, finally, he broke off with the new loony left. Best paired with the above Heresy essay by Paul Graham.
The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris is a book review hosted at ACX. Never knew of Robespierre before reading this book review and 2 paras in I was hooked. What a day that must have been in Paris. This review is a fantastic summary of book and day.
Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle is another book review hosted at ACX. Did not know what to expect going in but coming out of it, after reading this, I had that oh-so-rare emotion of ‘Good Lord, this explains SO MUCH of my current environment’ feeling that so few essays and books achieve. More people should know about Guy Debord.
Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance is yet another book review hosted at ACX. It reviews the book ‘1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline‘ and you walk away post reading away feeling like you were almost there in that non event year. A superb painting of a distant period via a well written book review.
Want to understand the genesis of this ongoing soul sapping culture war? Erik Torenberg’s done the heavy lifting for you via this 3 part series that explains how we all got unwillingly drafted into this sordid no winner war and ended in the stinking trenches we are all huddling in.
Truth, Status, and Tribes, The tensions between truth and social cohesion is another Erik Torenberg essay that does a superb job explaining just WHY people act and react the way they do in this ongoing soul sapping culture war. A solid hypothesis well written.
The Erosion of Deep Literacy sees Adam Garfinkle delving into what happens to a population when their attention span and IQ are assaulted by the double curse of a corrupted MSM and subpar education.
Pair the above three reads with this short gem from Amanda Fortini in the Free Press. In ‘Real Life Does Not Fit The Narrative’ Amanda rages beautifually against the prefabricated narratives we are sprayed with daily where the purpose of the narratives we are fed by the governing elites and mainstream media is to obscure reality, not to reveal it.
Bari Weiss is the founder and editor of The Free Press. In this stirring speech The New Founders America Needs, to students at The University of Austin, she makes a standing ovation worthy case for why it is time to join the true intellectual resistance. Goes well with The Turn and Heresy listed above.
The Opinion Pageant. Or how the pressure to have an opinion is creating a fake society Round off the culture war grand tour with this sharp essay from Gurwinder, a substack blogger who smartly explains the opinion pageant and the fraudulent world we now find ourselves living in.
Now we are going to go ‘Old School’ to read 2 classics by true legends of the medium. These two are the kind of essays that makes you react exactly like the Banderas meme :
Joan Didion, author, journalist, and style icon, died recently after a prolonged illness. She was 87 years old. Here now is Didion’s seminal essay “Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power” which was first published in Vogue in 1961. Didion wrote the essay as the magazine was going to press, to fill the space left after another writer did not produce a piece on the same subject. She wrote it not to a word count or a line count, but to an exact character count. Legend. And what an essay it is.
Last year I became a British citizen. To hit that happy milestone I had to pass a lifeless bland quiz mandated by the current goulishly led Home Office. I am certain the goal is to ensure wannabe citizens understand this country a wee bit more than they did landing in. But then here is an epic Orwell essay that does that job more thoroughly vs any soulless test. “England Your England” is an astoundingly penetrating essay written by George Orwell during The Blitz of 1941 as bombers of Nazi Germany flew overhead. It was his attempt to define English culture and the English people for the rest of the world as he feared that it might soon be wiped out by the Nazis. I remember reading this on my kindle on a flight back to London and as the plane approached English shores from the east, crossing the channel from France, I had this sublime moment when I felt like I knew my adopted country’s soul better than I ever had and what it meant to be English. Essays like this is why I will never stop reading them and why 30 years from now I hope to still be blogging about my favourite 25 from the last 250 read.
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So there is it. 25 of my favourite essays from 250 read in ~900 days. Next update ? When I finish 1100. Hopefully by the start of summer of 2024. Until then enjoy these above treats. For when you are done you will agree they so are.
Third Eye Observations 