Barely Filtered Thoughts

100+ Essays

The lists of essays below are separated by the sources from which I read them. Essays marked with 💯 were among the 100 essays read for the “What I learned from reading 100 essays” post that is coming at some point later this year. Essays that I particularly liked are additionally marked with a ⭐️.

As of August 15, 2025, I have read 11 essays for the planned post.

Separately published works

  1. We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 2014 💯⭐️
  2. On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, 2005 💯⭐️

Best American Essays (Robert Atwan, series ed.)

The year preceding each essay in this list is the yearly installment where it may be found in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Essays series of books. I pick these up cheaply (sometimes for free) at the local used bookstore.

  1. 2000: “In Defense of the Book,” William H. Gass 💯⭐️
  2. 2000: “The Resurrectionist,” Richard McCann 💯⭐️
  3. 2000: “At a Certain Age,” Lynne Sharon Schwartz 💯
  4. 2000: “A Designer Universe?,” Steven Weinberg 💯

Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory

These are essay collections, centering on writings about literature and jazz, by American author Ralph Ellison, better known as the author of the novels Invisible Man and Juneteenth. I read ten of the essays in these volumes for the 100 essays post and ended up reading the rest of them just for fun. The list of my readings from Shadow and Act and Going to the Territory for the 100 essays post is in active development.

You could effectively put a ⭐️ next to every essay from these collections, as Ralph Ellison is one of my favorite authors.

  1. 1958: “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” 💯

Internet sources

There is great longform content to be found on the Internet. The Vox Media family of sites is notable for high-quality essays about sports (SB Nation) and current events (Vox), and I will be adding Vox Media and other properties here as I find them.

  1. 2020: “Caster Semenya and the cruel history of contested black femininity,” Elizabeth Adetiba, SB Nation 💯
  2. 2018: “The misremembering of McGwire-Sosa,” Grant Brisbee, SB Nation 💯
  3. 2019: “Smell like Mike,” Alex Wong, SB Nation 💯
  4. 2018: “The Glass Sideline,” Tim Struby, SB Nation 💯
  5. 2017: “Mayweather-McGregor and the death spiral of American sports,” Spencer Hall, SB Nation 💯