The Best Things We Read on the Internet This Week: Sheila Heti, Secret Libraries, Tombstones

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Listicles, tweets, your ex’s Facebook status, picture of dogs wearing costumes — the internet offers no shortage of entertaining stuff to look at. But there’s plenty of substantial writing out there, too, the pieces you spend a few minutes reading and a long time thinking about after you’ve closed the tab. In this weekly feature, Flavorwire shares the best of that category. This week, Sheila Heti on grad school, tombstones, looking at the work of Jennifer Weiner, and more.

“Should I go to Grad School?: An Interview With Sheila Heti” by Jessica Loudis, The New Yorker

After what seems like a thousand and one pieces about why you should or should not go to graduate school (many of them with penned by folks with MFAs), this excerpt from the anthology Should I Go to Grad School features Sheila Heti explaining her reasons for not continuing college, and instead just experiencing things and meeting people as her education.

“Scenes from the New York Tombstone Trade” by Kyle Chayka, The Awl

It’s incredibly tough to go wrong with a piece that includes the sentence, “Vincent Carbone didn’t set out to be in a third-generation death salesman.”

“Close-reading Jennifer Weiner: Let’s give the best-selling author the serious, critical read she demands” by Laura Miller, Salon

Jennifer Weiner has written before that her work hasn’t benefited from the close reading that some authors enjoy. Laura Miller took up the challenge.

“Secret Libraries of New York” by Allison Meier, Atlas Obscura

This one is a bit of a no-brainer.

“The Tortured Rise of the All-American Bro” by Jared Keller, Pacific Standard

The title obviously grabs you. This piece could be a set of GIFs or another Vice takedown, but instead, Jared Keller attempts to change our perception of what the “bro” is. Does he succeed? Read the piece (and our own Tom Hawking’s response to it).