Hello, Alyx Gorman here again, with much thanks to Rafqa Touma for minding the reads these past few days. We have all made it to the end of another week, and also to the end of Five Great Reads’ run as a daily newsletter. Thank you all for keeping me company this summer, and for the lovely emails. With the working year very much on, I’m off. I’ll be taking a little holiday; so this goodbye, but not forever.
I’ve had plenty of requests to keep the reads coming, so that’s the plan, but weekly rather than daily. If you’ve got a preference for Saturday or Sunday (or some other day); or any other feedback, please feel free to email me at australia.lifestyle@theguardian.com.
If this adieu is leaving a newsletter-shaped hole in your life, I have options for you. For a weekday morning summary of the big headlines, our Morning Mail is your jam; if you’re after mildly delirious pop culture coverage, there’s Saved for Later, out on Saturday mornings. It’s co-authored by Steph Harmon, Michael Sun and me (but a crossover warning: it’s a different vibe from what you’re reading now).
You can also get our wraps of politics, opinion or an inbox full of First Dog on the Moon from our list of Guardian Australia emails, right here.
Now, after that very protracted outro of an intro, I think you deserve some reads.
1. A mercenary’s memoir
Marat Gabidullin, who fought in Syria alongside the Russian army’s pro-Assad forces, has written the first published account of the secretive Russian mercenary outfit Wagner. He wants his country to know that hired guns exist.
How secretive? “On paper, the firm does not exist, with no company registration, tax returns or organisational chart to be found,” writes Pjotr Sauer in Moscow. “Western governments and academics argue that Wagner is an unofficial foreign policy tool … deployed where Russia wants to extend its influence or create upheaval. Prigozhin and Moscow have denied any knowledge of Wagner; officially, private military companies remain illegal in Russia.”
Notable quote: “This current situation does not suit many of my comrades,” Gabidullin says of the private army ban. “More importantly, it does not suit the dead mercenaries’ parents and relatives, who cannot even talk openly about how their son or brother died. They can only whisper it.”
How long will it take me to read? Three minutes.
2. Emma Thompson on living in a woman’s body
Sandwiched between her mother and her daughter, the screenwriter and actor reflects on the ways three generations respond and recalibrate to each other when living under the same roof.
Notable quote: “‘Why is my fanny getting bigger?’ my mother breathes at me one morning as she is washing the forks,” Thompson writes. “We laugh for quite a long time. Her skin reminds me of my daughter’s when she was a baby: the same almost-not-there softness, lovely to stroke.”
Bonus read: Thompson’s piece is part of a series of stories from the groundbreaking playwright and activist V. Read the rest of the series here.
3. Louis Theroux on pointing the camera at extremists
The gonzo documentarian is back with a new series, Forbidden America, in which he visits the furthest tips of US fringe movements. Given the global conversation about de-platforming and misinformation, he writes: “My decision to put some potentially dangerous and inflammatory figures on BBC Two primetime might appear flat-out weird and irresponsible.”
So why is he doing it? “These troubled, sometimes dangerous people are legitimate subjects of journalistic inquiry,” he writes. “You wouldn’t have them sitting in as pundits on The Moral Maze but in the right context, with the right approach, speaking to people who have done terrible things can be a totally valid exercise … shining a light on aspects of human psychology and society in a way that promotes understanding and cultivates empathy.”
How long will it take me to read? Four and half minutes.
4. Winning the housing lottery
Thanks to quirks like rent stabilisation, and a very literal affordable housing lottery (seriously, that’s its name), there are a handful of ordinary New Yorkers who have lucked into extraordinary rental properties. Zoe Rosenberg meets a few of them.
Notable quote: “They’ll have to carry me out in a box,” says 82-year-old sculptor Joan Hall of her one-bedroom West Village apartment. In any other building in the area, it would cost US$5,000 a month but she moved into the subsidised artists’ housing in 1974 and pays just $833.20.
How long will it take me to read? Two minutes, plus another five to gaze at the gorgeous pictures and feel a bit envious.
5. The pull of a favourite toy
He may have looked “like a rag with a head” but, for Kelly Eng, a matted, greyish bear was a central figure in their family, her daughter’s comforter and confidant. He was lost many times but always found. Until the day he left for good.
Notable quote: “I was confident he’d show up,” Eng writes. “We just had to look harder. We retraced our steps, looked in bushes and wrote a ‘Lost Bear’ post in our neighbourhood Facebook group (all we got was 22 sad-face reactions).”
How long will it take me to read? Just a minute.
