In this week’s Sunday Book Review, Zoë Heller and Adam Kirsch weigh the importance of an author’s intended meaning versus a reader’s interpretation of the text. Which is more important, they ask. “If a text can mean anything the reader wants it to mean, then why read it in the first place?” Kirsch argues. “Isn’t literature supposed to help us achieve contact with other minds, rather than trapping us in a hall of mirrors, in which we can see only our own distorted reflections? Surely there must be limits to a text’s ­interpretability.” I instantly thought of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man—the 1952 epic that confronts America’s twisted legacy of identity politics, race, black nationalism, and class disillusionment. “I am an invisible man,” it begins. And depending on the reader, the ensuing 500 pages present a multitude of revelations, answers, or questions (or a mix of the three). Yet, no matter which way you interpret the book, its true essence is found, time and again, in the first sentence—all conclusions root back to Ellison’s opening line. “Great works of literature are like stars,” Kirsch concludes, “they stay put, even as we draw them into new constellations.”

Soda is bad for you. Sugary soft drinks like Coca-Cola, for example, have been linked to depression, diabetes, osteoporosis, and are known to accelerate aging. Last year, along with the American Beverage Association and Alliance for a Healthier Generation, several major beverage corporations decided to "promote smaller portions as well as zero and low calorie offerings, and provide calorie counts on vending machines, soda fountains, and retail coolers." Why? Because we're a nation of voracious consumers—clothes, TV, food, among other cravings—and, over time, soft drinks like Coke had become a leading contributor to America's obesity epidemic. What, then, should the purpose of a mega-corporation like Coca-Cola be? To sell a product and create a "lifestyle" for consumers? To profit at all costs? To make sure its customers don't die from heart disease? Or, perhaps, to make the internet a "more positive place" via an ASCII art Twitter bot? Whatever it is, it's certainly not the latter.

There's a lot to read and watch on the internet. In just sixty seconds, 278,000 tweets are sent, 347 posts are published on Wordpress, and 72 hours of footage are uploaded to YouTube. And it's only getting worse (like really, really bad). So, in the spirit of oversharing (click, click, click!), here are five medium-to-long reads that you most likely missed this week. From India's record-setters to Jan Brady on Jan Brady Meme™, these stories highlight the week that was.

Many things were published in 2014—things we liked; things we hated; things we didn't understand. And since it's that time of year where we shame you for reading all the wrong things, we've collected our favorite books, essays, short stories, lists, and blog posts into one place. We've also included selections from years past that caught our attention in 2014. Enjoy.

Jonathan Franzen, master of his own author photo propaganda, has a new binding of pages with words written on them coming out in... ten months. It is called Purity. Have you ever been more excited to read a work of lidərəCHər in your entire life?