what i read in december
tactical ideas about housing + deep thoughts on humanity + a little holiday Hallmark story
After some lighter reading in November, I returned to my typical cadre of non-fiction and thought-provoking reading material for December. I thought the holidays might inspire a few more Christmas stories, but that wasn’t what drew me in. I have a large TBR pile on my desk, and I choose whatever strikes my fancy when it’s time to pick the next book. Here’s what I read in December.
Three books I read this month address the housing crisis from different perspectives. While they share some ideas about solutions, they take opposing positions in other respects. It was interesting to compare and contrast the approaches each writer takes. None are particularly long, and you might find them good counterparts to each other if you appreciate a healthy conversation on the housing crisis in our country.
On the Housing Crisis by Jerusalem Demsus
Long a fan of her podcast, Good on Paper, Demsas compiled a series of essays she wrote about the housing crisis in the United States and how we might be able to fix it. In short, she argues there is not enough housing, we are building the wrong types of new housing, and we maintain too many regulatory barriers to building new housing. Demsas always offers thoughtful perspectives on complex social issues that rely on data and don't always reach the expected conclusion.
Strong Towns: A Bottom-up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn, jr.
This book is part of Marohn's more extensive work advocating building stronger, more resilient towns. He discusses elements of communities like walkability, small business investment, and thoughtful local government to create a sense of place.
His work centers passionately on the premise that local municipalities need long-term financial solvency—and most don't have it. Too often focused on growth and "shiny objects" to attract new sources of revenue to their communities, municipal leaders commit to projects and infrastructure they can’t afford to maintain in perpetuity.
Focusing on local government and resiliency will be more paramount than ever in an environment where national politics will undoubtedly be corrupt and chaotic. That made this book feel especially relevant right now. As a bonus, many of the steps he suggests for resilient towns also support positive climate action.
Free the Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos by Audrea Lim
Lim is an environmental journalist who has spent over a decade reporting on climate matters related to land ownership and management, particularly regarding Indigenous communities and their rights. In her work, she noticed a common thread. Land is limited, and when it's a privately owned commodity, it creates barriers to managing land in a way that benefits the collective. Private land ownership leads to land hoarding and speculation, both of which artificially inflate the price of land, create more income inequality, and lock more people out of benefitting from the limited land available.
Accumulation of land ownership, particularly by wealthy individuals and corporations, exacerbates the hardships of climate change, gentrification, racial injustice, and other social issues. She argues that a gradual shift toward more collective land ownership could alleviate poverty and advance climate solutions.
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
Maybe we don't need all the tech? Newport argues in the book that too much technology and digital connection deplete our quality of life. He shares a philosophy about digital minimalism, a thoughtful method for incorporating technology as a helpful tool without letting it take over and control our lives and attention. Newport shares many ideas to help build more intentional tech habits. My favorite is his suggestion to work more with our hands, specifically to make or fix something every week. I might make this a goal for 2025.
Orbital: A Novel by Samantha Harvey
This story narrates the journey of six astronauts who travel on the international space station over one day. The distant visual perspective gives an emotional perspective to life on Earth. Such a distant view shows the world without national lines, artificial boundaries, and barriers we create between humans. In some respects, it makes the planet seem so independent of the scuffles, skirmishes, and struggles among humans.
But more reflection highlights how, even from space, they can see humans' impacts on the planet—changing coastlines as sea levels rise, vegetative destruction from development, and melting glaciers uncovering rocks for the first time in eons. Humans seem so small and insignificant, but our impacts are glaring, even from hundreds of miles away and in the context of Earth as a piece of a giant solar system and multiple galaxies.
The novel's narrator speaks in a stream-of-consciousness style about the dichotomies of life on Earth and about purpose, humanity, freedom, and future. Through a dream of one of the astronauts, the author conveys:
"Our lives here are inexpressibly trivial and momentous at once... Both repetitive and unprecedented. We matter greatly and not at all. To reach some pinnacle of human achievement only to discover that your achievements are next to nothing and that to understand this is the greatest achievement of any life, which itself is nothing, and also much more than everything."
The book doesn't have a plot but is a philosophical conversation on being human, humanity, our purpose, and our impact on the planet and outer space more broadly.
This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
Pollan examines our cultural and legal perspectives on natural chemicals through the lens of three plant-based, mind-altering substances. He compares and contrasts opium, caffeine, and mescaline, each of which significantly impacts human thought and behavior but are treated very differently under social norms and legal jurisdiction. He offers interesting points about why it's odd that we legalize (and actively promote) some of these substances, like caffeine, while strictly criminalizing others, even when all are abundantly available in nature and have long histories as medicinal tools for civilizations and cultures past.
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
Egan asks, "What would the world be like if we could all upload a complete history of our unconscious thoughts to store forever and share with the public?"
In the novel, a social scientist discovers algorithms to predict how people interact with each other. Her daughter sells the rights to her findings to social media companies who ultimately convince people to upload their unconscious thoughts in exchange for free access to the "brain dumps" of everyone else who signed up to do the same. Essentially, “I'll share my unconscious with you if you do the same for me.”
While we don't currently have the technology to plug into people's brains and download their entire subconscious, the way people use social media in our lives today to document so many tidbits of their day to be stored on the internet forever is a watered-down (and maybe less authentic) version of this idea. Millions log their thoughts into public social media machines in real time to share with others who've signed up to do the same. We do this with little consideration for the consequences of how that data transfer will be used and exploited over time.
Egan sets the stage for commentary on how we give away massive amounts of personal data online in exchange for next to nothing. This personal data transfer wildly enriches companies when they sell that data to third parties without consent and with little regard for the long-term implications of their actions.
The story is about relationships and interactions that brought this personal data machine to life. I needed a relationship tree to keep all the characters straight while reading. I expected more commentary on the fallout of this social experiment, but I guess she left that to readers to contemplate in the context of what we see in our own real lives.
The Christmas Tree Farm: A Christmas Novella by Melody Carlson
It's a hallmark movie in a book. It's light. The plot is mildly unbelievable without a ton of character development. And it was just the right book to read leading up to the holidays when I had a million other distractions. There's a time and place for pleasant books that aren’t too deep.
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
I went deep on this one and will share my thoughts when I finish.
Coming soon: Read more about my thoughts on information, truth, and lies and how we sew them together via our information networks, especially when truth is at a premium.
