A second round of popular stories for our second week away.

Hello from the BSR editorial team, even though we're still on break through August 17. We queued up some recommended reading for you while we're away. Did you miss any of these popular evergreen stories?

We're looking forward to being back with you, starting next week. Thanks for supporting us as we take a much-needed rest!

Alaina Johns
BSR editor-in-chief

I live right around the corner from Philly Typewriter in East Passyunk, and let me tell you, Friday nights over there are packed. This isn't only a typewriter repair shop serving a growing resurgence of this wonderfully analog way of writing. It's a community hub for discussion groups, music, comedy, and more. Don't miss this story on how it all got started.

This recent piece by Anndee Hochman got me re-reading some of the Judy Blume novels I hadn't visited since I was a teenager. I was grateful for the nudge to revisit Blume's genius for honest, relatable stories about realistic teens navigating universal questions of faith, family, friendship, sex, and the future. And as Anndee urges, I will continue to stand up for our right to read despite book bans targeting Blume and many other authors. Anndee reminds us why this is so important.

After I published this piece last January, I got an email from a new reader. "I wanted to say thank you for the way you articulated the struggles that you and I (and I imagine millions of others) are facing on a pretty routine basis while living in an increasingly cruel, irrational, and oppressive culture," they responded. "It's hard enough living with mental illness when outside circumstances are reasonable and predictable; the last several months have made my day in and day out experience intolerable at times. It helps to read about how someone else has been able to maintain their sanity and live meaningfully in such scary and painful times. I found your article because I did an internet search about how to be 'ok' as a person residing in modern America, and I definitely got what I needed." This is why we do the work we do.

I love this conversation dance critic Melissa Strong strikes up with Philly-based trans and nonbinary dancers. They talk about how artists who don't conform to traditional gender norms are shaking up the dance world and performing on their own terms. We need these stories more than ever right now.