About

Think back to the last article which changed your world-view. That fantastic piece of writing you were immersed in for 30 minutes. The journalistic piece of excellence that made fall in love.

Now imagine 150+ such articles.

Yep, that’s what we have here.

What is this?

Library of Scroll is a collection of the best long-form reads we (Akshata and Nilambari) have found over the years. Most of these take 10-15 minutes to read, are free to read (no paywall), and span a wide variety of genres. If you’re new here, you can dive into our latest picks on the home-page, or browse our entire collection by genre here.

We send out a summary and link to our latest pick on Instagram, Twitter or e-mail – click to subscribe!

Why are we doing this to ourselves?

We love long-form reads, and are constantly on the lookout for a source that curates great pieces. Three things get in the way of every source that promises greatness:

One: A disproportionate focus on recent material, which meant they’d rarely share anything published before 2020. This meant skipping over some fantastic old material (which, for starters, don’t talk about the recent news – like the ever-present pandemic – on loop)

Two: Everyone sticks to a genre – skipping over a gamut of fun reads with no specific “genre” to call home. The internet is rife with pieces on a crazy variety of topics, and it sucks that people pigeon-hole their collections to just a handful.

Three: Inbox fatigue. They’d reach our inbox, but we get too overwhelmed with our newsletter back-log to read through the whole thing. It was a problem waiting to be cracked: what gets a human being to actually read something they subscribe to? A clean no-nonsense email? Skip the inbox and leaf through a pictorial summary that pops up on Instagram? Keep a website which you can visit on your own terms?

What do we do instead?

First, we span decades when we collect articles. Our picks can get as old as this 1955 anecdote on Einstein, and as recent as this beautiful 90-minute 2020 essay on a beautiful friendship.

Second, we are way too eclectic when it comes to our picks:

Given the two curators who met in b-school, we obviously do hunt for some cool advice on striving to become leaders, on navigating corporate life & on the craziness that is adulthood post college (amirite?)

But we also love to read about love, life & loss.

And most importantly there are days, where we want to completely detach from our personal & professional lives, and go down enchanting rabbit holes: say a visually stunning long-read on Butterfly Catchers by Nat Geo, or an evergreen essay by the running novelist (Murakami) from The New Yorker or, wait for it, a riveting podcast on a guy who goes to great lengths to find “that song that’s stuck in his head”

Third, we did want people to read the damn thing. So, we built it as prettily and intuitively as we could – we have a website, and allow subscribers to choose between an Instagram subscription or a pretty neat newsletter!

How has the journey been thus far?

To be honest, we didn’t think we would last more than a month (“We will definitely run out of articles” or worse, “We will get bored and move on”). But here we are, 16 months strong, 150+ articles and 3500+ subscribers.

And above all, for us, Library of Scroll has been an exercise in discipline, in teamwork & on learning to spend time on things for pure joy (you know, we can just share plain links when we feel like it, but we add some pizzazz for the sheer whimsy of it all).

Re-reading some of these reads has given us perspective & clarity: we have definitely become a little less insecure about what’s to come in our careers & lives, and a little more “make the most of now” kinda folks in the last 16 months. Dive into our archives to experience some of this magic for yourself!

Wait, how do I check this out, again?

Right – in case you missed the links earlier, you can subscribe to our email newsletter, Twitter or our Instagram feed. If you want to see all our archives in one place, you can always stop by our website!