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).

A Mad World | Aeon

A diagnosis of mental illness is more common than ever, which begs the question: Did psychiatrists create the problem, or just start recognizing it? Joseph Pierre, a professor of psychiatry, argues the latter — that more ways are being found to treat real problems. After all, while it may be growing more frequent, mental illness is still very much brushed under the rug. Your boss doesn’t react in quite the same way to an email about the flu as he might to an email about a schizophrenic episode.

Marjan the Lion: Slain AFP Reporter Sardar Ahmad's Final Story | Mashable

Sardar Ahmad, a 40-year-old AFP reporter, was killed on Friday in an attack at Kabul's Serena hotel. His wife and two children also died in the shooting. His youngest, not quite 2, is in a coma. This is Ahmad's final story, about Marjan the lion, who lived on a rooftop in the city until being rescued by animal-welfare officials last year when close to death.

Image: SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

Pixel and Dimed: The Economy | Fast Company

For one month, Sarah Kessler tried living off the "gig economy" — taking entrepreneurial jobs with startups like TaskRabbit, Postmates and Airbnb. But the hustle didn't pay off: She worked hard, didn't get much pay and found a system that puts workers at a disadvantage.

The Secret World of Fast Fashion | Pacific Standard

Over the past 15 years, from 1960s Korea to Brazil to today’s Los Angeles, the design-to-distribution process for a piece of clothing has collapsed from three months to just two weeks. Anthropologist Christina Moon takes us on an inside tour of the world that brought you that pair of skinny jeans or that trendy H&M top, and where it's headed next.

U.S. Film Crew Recounts Harrowing Escape From Pro-Russian Mob in Ukraine | Mashable

An American documentary film crew says it was attacked by a crowd in Ukraine and barely escaped alive, and here, the film's director recounts the harrowing tale to Mashable's Brian Ries. "It would have been impossible to run [...] It was definitely a moment of — just kind of thinking is this it?"

Image: Animal Media Group

Waiting on a Fix | Al Jazeera America

In the 1980s, America went to war on drugs. Crack was public enemy No. 1, and the government's weapon of choice was mandatory minimum sentences. Thirty years later, lawmakers' efforts to roll back unfair laws haven't gone far enough, stranding thousands of prisoners still serving yesterday's sentences. Al Jazeera's collection of stories peers into America's long, complicated history with crack.

Mapmakers Debate How to Define Crimea | Mashable

Much of the world is watching how the high-stakes tug-of-war over Crimea will play out, but few groups of professionals are more invested than cartographers. The debate that has taken center stage among this small but influential club is one over Crimea, the once-autonomous region of Ukraine that voted on March 16 to become a part of Russia. From Bing to Google to Rand McNally, the maps vary — and probably will for quite some time.

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.