'I’m not good at much, but I’m good at chemotherapy.'

Hi 👋 

Another Monday, another The Lazy Reader longform reading list ✨

Brevity will be my philosophy for the coming weeks (possibly until the end of the year). I’ve been drowning in deadlines and have been finding it even harder than usual to carve out the time to arrange these newsletters. The reading, thankfully, has been going fine. I’m reading much more than I ever have. Which is incredible.

Anyway, what that means is that intros like these and the blurbs that come after each entry will be shorter for the following weeks. To readers who (somehow) enjoy my rambling—apologies!

In any case, here are some choice picks from last week’s newsletter. Check the whole thing here if you want.

• GQ The Accident: A Crash That Shattered a Group of Friends

• The Atavist Mother, Stranger

• Mother Jones When a Kid Kills His Longtime Abuser, Who’s the Victim?

As with last week, please let me know what you think of the list this week by voting in the poll below.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

PS - Thanks so much to I Hate It Here and The Code for supporting this week’s edition of TLR! Please, please consider clicking their respective links below—it’s free, really easy, and helps me out a lot.

If I’m not mistaken, this is one of the very first stories that The Atavist ever did. But in my opinion, it also remains one of their most intense pieces to date.

Here, Joshua Hammer follows one father’s warpath as he fights for justice for his daughter, who he believes was sexually abused and murdered by his ex-wife’s new husband. Which brings me to my content warning: Some spots here that get pretty violent and graphic, so please take care when reading through.

Interestingly, this story reflected some feelings of resentment onto me. This father fought for three decades against two justice systems: One slow and inept, the other seemingly corrupt. But he also fought against the inaction of everyone who should have been on his side but grew tired of the campaign for justice. By the end of this story, I found myself rooting only for the father. I realize now that that must have been an extremely lonely fight for him.

On a technical note, Hammer flexes really hard here. Masterful research and prose is typical for The Atavist, but it still deserves to be spotlighted. The piece takes you through some very intricate narrative side streets and evokes complex emotions—both of which it achieved through the granular level of detail that Hammer was able to unearth, and the careful way in which he executed the story.

TLR Fiction Pick: Freediver | Reactor, Free

Putting another fiction recommendation here. Decided to just flag those upfront so people know what they’re getting into when they click. But this one I loved. Lots of strong emotional punches throughout, plus a nice and tight narrative. Still comes with the typical pitfalls of short stories (especially in characterization), but I think that should go without saying. Excellent piece overall.

Just a heads-up: I’ll be adding Reactor to my usual roll of outfits that I source my picks from. You’re likely going to see a lot more from them.

Amazon's Dark Secret: It Has Failed to Protect Your Data | WIRED, $

Pretty apt pick here (if I do say so myself) if a bit late, given how the Amazon Black Friday sale just ended. But cybersecurity and Internet privacy will always be a big deal in the world we live in, and this story shows how the biggest online retailer not just “failed to protect your data,” as the headline reads, but ignored safety warnings over and over again—and lied about it. All in service of profit.

What a Wrongful Death Lawsuit Reveals About America’s Largest Oxygen Provider | ProPublica, $

Something shorter from ProPublica here, but definitely not less hard-hitting than their usual feature fare. Here, the writer pulls back the curtain a bit on the medical device industry and how it—as a symbol of the corporate healthcare space more broadly—only pretends to put patient care first. Profit is still king.

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Another beautiful essay. This one takes you into the world—and into the psyche and suffering body—of a cancer patient. The ravages of chemotherapy are intense, even for young, decently healthy patients who were given a bright prognosis.

The writer here talks about his high hopes of being graceful while being pumped full of toxic chemicals, and the realization that treatment is, actually, awful. Compounding his difficulties is Ben, who appears to be taking the pharmaceutical assault in stride, able to not just joke around with hospital staff but also go on dates, see the world, what have you.

The essay rides this tension in a light-hearted, sometimes humorous way that works refreshingly well, especially given the subject here. And while the writer makes light of his (entirely made-up) rivalry with Ben, the piece in reality tries to go into some of the deepest, if not ugliest, parts of our humanity—those that make themselves known only when we confront our utmost limits.

The Double Life of Former Wirecard Executive Jan Marsalek | DER SPIEGEL, Free

Incredible investigation and really interesting subject matter. Huge plus for this being a multi-newsroom, cross-border journalistic effort. You don’t see those everyday anymore. It’s really clear that DER SPIEGEL, along with its collaborators, put in an unreal amount of work into this, which manifests in the crazy level of detail that they mustered.

The Suicide Catcher | GQ, $

Another Michael Paterniti special, and this time he tries to grapple with the very thorny subject of suicide: what it reveals about humanity, about our society, about the precariousness of life and living. He does this by profiling an old man in China who has dedicated his life to catching and stopping people about to jump off one of the country’s busiest bridges. An ingenious approach, for sure, but one that, in my opinion, tripped Michael up, causing him to slide into some very tired, very obvious tropes about Chinese people. This story is a product of its time (2010), but still. Big minus for me.

A Shadow Over Svalbard | The Dial, Free

Really interesting to read about the domestic issues of other countries (aside from the U.S., of course, because you guys have an incredible talent for being in everyone’s airwaves). It’s even more interesting to see how frictions in very faraway countries mirror those in your own country. I’d say that’s at least partly because of the expert reporting and writing here: Kenneth Rosen didn’t just dig far enough to hit some universal tensions, but also wrote things out to bring those pain points to the fore. Not the longest story out there, but definitely really well-done.

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Thanks for reading! Please, please reach out if you have feedback, suggestions, or questions. Alternatively, you can fill out this super quick survey form. I promise it won’t even take five minutes of your time, and it’ll be a HUGE help!

ALSO: I know some of the stories I recommend might be behind paywalls, and maybe I can help you with access to those. Send me a message and let’s see what we can do 😊

Until next Monday! 👋