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Hi 👋 

Another Monday, another TLR reading list ✨

We’re doing another series this week, our last one for the year. This one has been on my TBR pile since February. After a lot of dragging my feet—another ship accident story?—I decided to go for it.

Glad that I did. Because while it is technically a bread-and-butter maritime piece, it gets much more personal. The writers did an incredible job of really letting the readers get to know the victims, and of paying witness to the pain of the people they left behind. That must have taken a lot of grace to report out.

This is still, of course, a crisis story, and while the piece sets that aside for the first few parts, it sure as hell doesn’t forget it. By the last two chapters, the piece’s investigation really gets going and the writers don’t shy away from all the physics, the engineering, the fluid dynamics (or whatever) of how a boat sinks. The story gets a bit political, too, probing places where the investigation and court proceedings went sideways.

Overall a really strong piece of journalism and an enjoyable read.

Let’s jump straight into it:

Chapter 2: Costly Clerical Error Stalls Rescue Efforts

Chapter 3: Worst Fears are Realized, Six Men Lost at Sea

Chapter 4: A Behemoth Enters the Fishing Grounds

Chapter 5: A Case of High Seas Hit-and-Run?

A bonus: Here is a PDF of the article in print. It’s black-and-white, but it’s beautiful. Broadsheet design is an increasingly lost art, sadly.

If you missed last week’s email, feel free to give that a read. Lots of really good reads that might have flown under your radar. Otherwise, here are a few choice picks:

• The Atavist The Kalinka Affair

• DER SPIEGEL The Double Life of Former Wirecard Executive Jan Marsalek

• GQ The Suicide Catcher

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The Notorious Mrs. Mossler | TexasMonthly, $

I read this story toward end of last week, and at first I was a bit skeptical: It sounded very similar to the Outside story below and it felt like it didn’t set itself apart from the dozens of love affair-turned-homicide stories. Boy was I wrong.

The titular Mrs. Mossler here is, in my estimation, the best illustration of a manipulative femme fatale. She knows her charm well and plays to it perfectly. And she also knows what she wants (and what she doesn’t want), and will stop at nothing to have her way. She only ever starts to crack at the end, but once she does, you’ll realize that there really was a monster lurking beneath her surface all along.

The Tale of John and Ann Bender and Their Quest for Paradise | Outside, $

This story is cut from the same cloth as the one from TexasMonthly above—it dives into a troubled relationship that turned bloody, ending in the death of one and the public castigation of the other. But as with all Outside pieces, this one also has some air of adventure. The two people at the heart of this story are searching for their place in the world. But they’re also extremely rich and privileged, and not as mindful of it as they should be.

So their quest quickly turns contentious, often involving some questionably extravagant architectural choices for a house in the middle of a forest, and running afoul of the locals. All of that helped to turn this story into one of the more memorable ones for me.

Can Colombia End the War on Drugs? | The Dial, Free

Hm. Just from the headline, it’s easy to see that this piece tries to tackle some very complicated, controversial stuff. Not to mention it writes from inside the seat of the empire, which really doesn’t help with the framing of this piece and its arguments.

The Dial is doing something admirable on paper: sourcing writing from all over the planet to help understand world culture from the bottom up. But with the structure and pedigree of its editorial board, and its actual physical location—both of which heavily influence its ideologies—the publication isn’t particularly positioned to deliver something new about the War on Drugs, I’d argue.

And that’s pretty much how the story goes. There are some interesting glimmers there, such as when the writer points out that it’s the global powers-that-be that really the ultimate shape of Colombia’s domestic drug policies, but the overall focus of it remains short-sighted, in my opinion.

Fiction: Catskin | Lightspeed Magazine, Free

Really nice little fairytale here. But unlike your usual fable this one—and the story admits it very early on—has no happy endings. I enjoyed this story a lot because it felt like a good change of pace from all the non-fiction articles that I read, but I won’t lie: this isn’t an easy read. It has the trappings of a children’s tale, sure, but it also has some faint but definitely-there nauseating undertones. Just something to keep in mind.

Of course, as with all fairytales, this one obviously has a moral to impart. But I think the beauty in it is the story allows you to wear it however you want.

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Thanks for reading!

As always, feel free to reach out if you have any comments or suggestions or questions.

I also just want to say thank you to the sponsors of this week’s newsletter, Finance Buzz and The Daily Upside. Please do consider clicking their ad links above. It’s free, easy and helps me out a lot!

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! 👋