Transcript
Mallory O' (0:00)
Foreign. You're listening to Reading Glasses, a show about book culture and literary life designed to help you read better. I'm author and book devourer Mallory o'.
Meara (0:14)
Meara.
Bria Grant (0:14)
I'm Bria Grant, filmmaker and e reader. This episode, we're talking about how we're tracking our books for the new year. Plus, we're going over our caw piles from last year. That's right. We're going to tell you what that is. If you just instantly listen to the show for the first time, we're going to tell you what it is. And we're testing out a bookish candle that I think smells like the mall.
Mallory O' (0:30)
Oh, yeah. But first, Bria, what are you reading?
Bria Grant (0:34)
I am listening to a book that a lot of people listened to this last year. It's called Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Did you listen to this one?
Mallory O' (0:41)
No.
Bria Grant (0:42)
So basically, it's about, look, we're living in a time where nothing is affordable. Everything's bad, everything's bad. And the question is, like, why is that? And, like, what can we do to change that? And it may be answers that we all find a little bit uncomfortable. And right now I'm in a section about housing and like, how used to you could buy a house with two. Two years of your salary, you know, and now that is not the situation. And like, why. When did that change? What made that change? What made us be like, oh, houses should be like a big investment. Like, what. What changed? Like, in the economy, but also, like, the way we view resources and getting into some stuff that's like, you know, made me go like, yeah, you know what? Maybe I'm. I'm doing this incorrectly, or I bought into this weird system that we've. And like, the problem with housing, and this is just one section of the book, but the problem with people not being able to afford housing and the problem with having unhoused people on the street is that there's not enough homes. There's literally not enough homes. We've set up regulations to where the problem. So, like, that. It's something that, like my little leftist, you know, so it's making me not question my leftist beliefs because obviously this is very. It's a very leftist book, but it also is making me think about things that I haven't thought about in a specific way.
Mallory O' (1:52)
Yeah.
Bria Grant (1:53)
Before, you know, where it's not just about, you know, in Los Angeles, we recently passed this density law where we. We're trying to build more density, and there are a lot of people who are against it. People who are on the left. And, like, I understood why they were against it, but this book is, like, made me go, like, making me, like, really think through my belief system and, like, the system that I have bought into. And, like, what does it mean to have abundance? What does it mean to live in abundance? Where everyone has abundance.