Welcome to Litsy!

Random book from our home library:

📖 The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement by David Brooks

I picked this up on a whim based on a blurb on the cover from author Jeff VanderMeer. A thoughtful and compelling account of Christopher Brown's effort to convert an abandoned lot full of concrete debris and an underground oil pipeline into an unconventional home. Told in brief vignettes and sketches rather than in a linear storyline, Brown's paean to unbridled nature made me yearn for spring and time to work on my chaos garden.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I‘m torn on this one. The author highlights important areas where boys lag behind girls (rates of maturation, educational attainment) and ways particularly Black boys experience discrimination and the structural issues they face in school and society. He‘s careful to make clear he does not want to improve outcomes for boys and men at the expense of women. He loses me when talking about how now that women don‘t “need” men, ⬇️

My annual reading theme is sociopolitical. I haven't had a chance to post my full #Roll100 list yet. However, these are the 3 for January's roll. Getting 2025 off to a fighting start.

@PuddleJumper HNY x

Might be appreciated by One Direction fans?

Both informative and infuriating, the authors offer a look at how culture wars, not policy, shape our political systems. 4.5⭐️

This was great as always!

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Look at fat phobia from a formerly/“small” fat philosopher. The moral philosophy about what we “owe” others in society was interesting, but a lot of the stuff about issues fat people face in society has been covered better by others, like Aubrey Gordon. Her conviction about abandoning diet culture fell a little flat considering she recently lost 60 lbs. and is in a smaller body, and the coverage of GLP-1s seemed hastily tacked on to the end

I want to remind everyone at this time about special ballots and mail ins. These are never counted right away. Especially important for Pennsylvania and Michigan these two states are razor thin. And some of the states haven't finished their counts yet.
#uselection #americavotes

3/5

Christopher Brown was inspired by the nature and wildlife he began to notice within his city when he purchased an empty lot in an industrial area in Austin to build his home. He began to document the ways that nature reclaims the places humans abandon.

I thought this book was beautifully written and the topic was very interesting. It was also very dense and I had difficulty focusing on the overall message.