Sites We Like: The Electric Typewriter
For the last two years, I’ve made a personal commitment to try and read more essays and long form journalism. While my goal is really to read through many of the essay collections I have sitting on my bookshelves, I also love coming across websites that do the work of curating great examples of long form writing that I can save to read later (using my current reading app of choice, Pocket).
One of my recent favorite sources for online essays is The Electric Typewriter, which collects “selected features, articles and essays from the world’s best journalists and writers.”
Each day, the editors post several essays — a mixture of new and old — on a whole host of topics. They’re often the kinds of essays that can make a reader deeply fascinated in a subject you never knew enough to care about, my favorite kind.
Their best feature, however, has to be their collection of reading lists. For many, editors have collected 10 to 30 of the best essays on a particular topic — work, the environment, sex — in one place. Most lists are broken down further by topic, and each listing includes a brief summary of the article to help pick the ones that might be most interesting.
But if books are more your style, the site also has a list of 100 Great Nonfiction Books to consider, with some expected (Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer) and unexpected (The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch) choices. Despite reading mostly nonfiction, I’ve only read 20 of the 100 on the list — I’m so excited to read more.
If you’re a reader of essays, or would like someone to start curating lists of essays for you to try, you won’t do better than The Electric Typewriter.
