Weekend Reading: Serial Killers and Spirituality: The New Yorker Chris Heath's August feature in GQ is as much a psychological thriller as it is a piece of journalism. The story traces the life of a notorious Swedish serial killer, named Thomas Quick, or Sture Bergwall - through his childhood, his crimes, his court appearances, and his asylum stay - before revealing his most shocking confession. With descriptions like "After dismembering her, something he recounted in particularly gruesome detail, he then hid different body parts in different places around the landscape," Heath lulls you into convictions and allegiances about character and plot. That is, until he tells you something entirely different. And then he does it a second time. If you believe in simple and happy endings, pure and righteous tales of an innocent betrayed and then redeemed, stop reading now. The Boston Globe, too, published an article this week that appears to belong in a mystery novel. Last October, the newspaper received a cardboard box full of human remains with a note asking the publication to find out whom they belonged to. Aware of the situation's strangeness, the note's author included the line "This is not a Halloween prank." The package prompted an investigation into questions that have gone thirty-seven years unanswered. Nearly four decades ago, four young people went out boating in Plymouth, Massachusetts and never returned. Fishermen found their partially submerged vessel but nobody ever identified their bodies. With the appearance of this package, their three families again seek closure for their lost loved ones. But what about the impact of gaining loved ones? Virginia Hughes writes in Aeon Magazine about research by the neuroscientist Charles Nelson in Romanian orphanages. Funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the research examines the developmental differences between children brought up in foster homes and in state-run childcare institutions. Hughes focusses as much on how the scientists feel as on what they do. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Rosen explores a different ethical dilemma: How should the Internet treat speech that harms others? By following a number of Silicon Valley executives as they navigate this question, the story traces the fine line between preventing hate speech and compromising freedom of expression. The article came out two months ago, well before the current debates over, for example, Twitter and rape. And lastly, some inspiration for your weekend: George Saunders's convocation speech to the Syracuse University class of 2013. Its beauty is found in its wisdom. Saunders urges the graduates to be kind, compassionate, and selfless. He urges them in the development of the spirit, That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality - your soul, if you will - is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. ... Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Earlier in the address, Saunders remarked, "Succeeding," whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there's the very real danger that "succeeding" will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.