Read: “Love in the Time of Cholera.” Unpopular opinion, but I disliked “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Gabriel García Márquez’s famous 1967 novel. I found it virtually impossible to decipher between the various names in the Buendía clan (there were four different “Jose Arcadios” in the family tree). I have found no such issues with the Colombian Nobel laureate’s novel “Love in the Time of Cholera,” a beautiful and tragic romance story about a man who can’t ever get over his first love. The sentences are long, the prose is stunning, and the characters easy to decipher. Enjoy. – Zac
Listen: “Criminal” podcast series by Vox Media. Host Phoebe Judge pores over some of the strangest and most interesting true-crime cases you’ve likely never heard of. With the recent crackdown on forced labor “scam centers” in Myanmar and across Asia, the episodes “The Compound” and “The Phone Call” shed some light on the inner workings of these criminal syndicates. For something a little closer to home, I’d recommend the episode “Mr. Apology” about an answering-machine that captivated New Yorkers in the 1980s, offering an anonymous line for people to confess their wrongdoings. – Ted
Read: “Rejection” by Tony Tulathimutte, if you dare. Reading this novel is like looking through a cracked mirror at modern culture. One that amplifies how many things – from social media to the pervasiveness of gambling – are designed to tip the scales of its users towards madness. It is a spooky foray into internet culture, and its offline repercussions, through a series of cleverly entwined vignettes. To say I enjoyed it, would be inaccurate. But it certainly made me think. – Riley