IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.

We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.

1. Prince 

Prince in 1985. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

A nine-hour documentary about the late musician was made for Netflix, but his estate are objecting to its release. Sasha Weiss, who is one of a small number of people to have seen the film, writes about what it contains in this engrossing piece.  

(The New York Times, approx 41 mins reading time)

The story of Prince that was emerging was a story of a person bent on fame and control. From the very beginning, when he signed his first contract with Warner Brothers at age 18, he insisted on a level of independence unusual for an artist so green. When Warner Brothers suggested that Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire produce his debut album, Prince refused and did it himself. He became a domineering band leader — ruthlessly extracting from his musicians the sounds he was hearing in his head, often subjecting them to 10-, 12-hour days and growling in their faces about their insufficiencies. Edelman was finding that the people Prince worked with were still afraid of him — yet in many cases were also tenderly protective. As Edelman completed his interviews — more than 70 of them — he realized there wasn’t some big secret that people were hiding. Instead, what he found were the defining traumas of Prince’s childhood and his constant recapitulating of them. The story unfolds slowly, hauntingly, over the course of the film.

2. Inside the illegal organ trade

Seán Columb spoke to more than 40 people to find out how the horrifying practice is able to thrive, despite being illegal in almost every country in the world, and the people who fall victim to it. 

(The Guardian, approx 19 mins reading time)

Around the world, the cost of a transplant on the black market ranges from $20,000 to $200,000 – the higher price generally reflecting better treatment and care. The “donor” typically receives a fraction of this cost. The amount that they receive varies from country to country. In the Philippines and Colombia impoverished farmhands and bonded labourers have been documented as receiving less than $2,000 for a kidney. In contrast, kidneys have been sold for between $10,000 and $20,000 in Israel and Turkey.

In Egypt a kidney can sell for anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000. Patients, or “transplant tourists”, pay between $50,000 and $100,000 for a kidney transplant, including travel and accommodation. The price generally depends on market demand. For a kidney, the price paid to the seller can be anywhere between $5,000 and $20,000. Part of the broker’s job is to find out just how wealthy the buyer is, and to establish the absolute minimum the seller is prepared to accept. An impoverished, unemployed seller with no legal status is in no position to negotiate. For this reason, illegal migrants make valuable targets.

3. Ultimate World Cruise

The Serenade of the Seas. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be at sea on a giant ship for nine months? Some people did just that. Here’s what it was like on board Serenade of the Seas. 

(CNN, approx 16 mins reading time)

Over the first month at sea, the viral fame reverberated through the ship. “Soon, we had billions of people watching us and saying, ‘What drama is going to happen?’” recalls the passenger known as Little Rat Brain – or LRB for short – a 24-year-old American who has asked for her real name not to be included in this article for privacy reasons. LRB, speaking to CNN Travel on the eve of the cruise’s end, says she understands it seemed like the “perfect setup for a reality TV show.” “It’s a lot of people in a small area where pretty much everything is free,” she says. (Technically nothing was free – the nine month cruise cost anywhere from $59,999 to $117,599 per person – but unlimited onboard food and drinks was included in that sum)

4. The oligarchs that beat the fraud squad

An excellent saga of reporting by Tom Burgis on how a mining empire owned by oligarchs has turned the UK’s Serious Fraud Office on its head, and is now going to receive a huge sum of taxpayers’ money in damages. 

(The Guardian, approx 41 mins reading time)

With mines from Kazakhstan to Congo, ENRC – Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation – was once one of the most valuable companies on the London Stock Exchange, worth £20bn at its peak just a few years earlier. In 2007, when it floated, captains of British business, two of them with knighthoods, were appointed to ENRC’s board to steward this new giant of UK commerce. Soon, though, the business pages were carrying tales of boardroom ructions. The oligarch founders, three billionaires from the former Soviet Union known as the Trio, were fighting the company’s directors for control of this vast mining empire. The scandal deepened when allegations emerged that the prized mines ENRC had taken over in Africa were won with bribes. 

Jackson’s source told him about another of ENRC’s African deals. In 2011, it had bought a manganese prospect in South Africa called Kongoni. The price was $295m. Which was odd. Because Kongoni was so remote and hard to mine that it was worth nothing like as much. That, at least, had been the view of an expert geologist who had examined it: André Bekker. “This thing,” Jackson said to himself as he heard the dead man’s name, “it’s much deeper than we thought.”

5. Chappell Roan

Chappell Roan performing in August. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The singer seems to have had a meteoric rise to stardom almost overnight this year, with millions listening to her pop anthems. But as she tells Brittany Spanos, her career has been a decade in the making. 

(Rolling Stone, approx 30 mins reading time)

After Coachella, the iconic moments kept coming. In June, at Gov Ball, Roan was rolled out in a big red apple, dressed as Lady Liberty while coolly smoking a very large joint; the photos and videos dominated social feeds. She may have had the biggest crowd ever for a Lollapalooza set, and she wasn’t even a headliner. Singles, including one released back in 2020, have begun charting. “Pink Pony Club,” a sparkling power-pop moment with two guitar solos and an unforgettable chorus about a girl leaving Tennessee to dance at a gay bar on Santa Monica Boulevard, has become a dance-floor staple. 2022’s “Casual” has blown up on TikTok. The cheerleader-inspired “Hot to Go!” can be heard at baseball games; even the bros know its “YMCA”-style dance. After Gov Ball, Roan noticed, “I was getting almost a hundred thousand followers a day. At first, I was in severe denial,” she recalls. “They would literally show me some stats and the only thing I could do is say, ‘No, no, no. It’s not like that.’ I couldn’t say, ‘I am gaining success.’ ” By August, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess had hit Number Two, behind only Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.

6. One and done

After you’ve finished a book, have you ever picked it up to read it again? In this essay, Oscar Schwartz makes a case against it. 

(The Paris Review, approx 11 mins reading time)

As a student, I came to appreciate such granularity. Going over a text many times allowed me to fine-tune my initial intuitive judgments into something more comprehensive. There was an intellectual satisfaction in this, but I also felt, quietly, that rereading was not really reading. There was an immediacy, intensity, and complete surrender involved in the initial experience that could never be repeated and was sometimes even diminished on the second pass. Louise Glück wrote, “We look at the world once, in childhood. / The rest is memory.” I felt the same about reading. I still feel like this. And, to this day, when I read something that functions as a hinge in my life—a book that rearranges me internally—I won’t reread it. The Neapolitan Novels I won’t read again. Nor Swann’s Way. Nor 2666. And several others that I won’t mention because it’s embarrassing. After all these years, I still haven’t reread The Power of One. (It’s possible that if I did go back and reread The Power of One, I wouldn’t find the murder scene. Did I make it up entirely? Am I confusing it with another book or movie?)

…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVE…

The Lower Manhattan skyline with Tribute of Light to mark the anniversary of 9/11. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

It’s been 23 years since the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001.

Rick Rescorla died evacuating one of the towers. This 2002 article about his story and his actions on that day is an exceptional piece of writing, and one that you won’t forget in a hurry. 

(The New Yorker, approx 47 mins reading time)

Hill turned back to the TV and, within minutes, saw the second plane execute a sharp left turn and plunge into the south tower. Susan saw it, too, and frantically phoned her husband’s office. No one answered. About fifteen minutes later, the phone rang. It was Rick. She burst into tears and couldn’t talk. “Stop crying,” he told her. “I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.”

Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.