During the week, we consume words in snackable, tweetable bites. But on the weekends, we have the time to take a dive into the murkier, lengthier depths of the Internet and expand our attention spans beyond 140 characters. We can brew a cup of coffee and lie back with our iPads, laptops, smartphones and Kindles.
Since you're bound to miss a few things during the daily grind, we present to you, in our weekly installation of Mashable Must Reads, a curated list of can't-miss stories from around the web to read and reflect on. (You can find last week's must reads here.)
More than 22,000 homeless children live in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression. The number is so high, in fact, that it can be difficult to visualize the sheer scope. In this gut-wrenching five-part series, the Times puts a human face on youth homelessness: 11-year-old Dasani and her family.
What's the price we pay for cheap meat? Some of the factory farms where animals are turned into meat operate under unbelievably dire conditions. Some 528 million land acres across the U.S. are devoted to animal production, but activists and whistleblowers are piloting farms to replenish the land and the animals living there. Editor's note: This piece includes content that some may find disturbing.
In 1999, TIME Magazine changed its "Man of the Year" to "Person of the Year." It was a step in the right direction, but of the 86 annual issues that the magazine has published since 1927, only five featured women. That's not for a lack of contenders.
The four-part series makes you relive the horror and suspense that filled the news in February of Christopher Dorner, the former LAPD police officer charged with a series of shootings on police officers and their families. The story is so mind-blowing — Dorner knew exactly what he was doing — that it strangely feels like reading fiction.
Jacki Munzel, 50 and a mother of three, isn't a household name. But 30 years ago, on track to make the U.S. figure skating team for the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, she had a very real shot at it. Then, months before the Games, her chance melted away in a matter of moments due to a debilitating illness. So began her long path to recovery — and, perhaps, another shot at another Winter Games.
It's hard to argue that 2013 was the year of Google. Among other milestones, the company launched Google Glass, Android grabbed 81% of the smartphone market and their stock hit $1,000 per share. In an interview, Luc Vincent, the man behind the imagery in Google's online maps, reveals some of his grand plans for the search giant. Don't ask what they are; ask where.
Over the past few weeks, mayhem has filled the streets of Kiev, Ukraine. After President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign free trade and political agreements with the European Union, citizens took to the streets in protest, demanding closer relations with the EU. Here, Christopher Miller, an editor at English-language newspaper the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, reflects on the demonstrations.
Don't have time to read them all now? In our Readlist below, export this week's must reads to your tablet to save for a time you have no distractions. Simply click the "read later" button alongside each story or or click "export" to send the entire list of articles to your preferred device.

Image: Dmitry Korotaev/Kommersant Photo via Getty Images