2024, a Year in Reading

Books make great gifts, so what are we reading this year?

Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold On to What Matters by Charan Ranganath

Ranganath is a professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. His book deals with the role memory plays in everyday life, and how it shapes our lives and experience.

About his book, he said "I wanted to clarify that idea that memory changes as we get older, but it's not what people think. And I think it's important to bust some stereotypes about this… in terms of people out there who might be worried about their own memory."

I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine by Daniel Levitin

Levitin, neuroscientist and musician, returns with another book about music and the mind. In this book, he studies the science of how music can relive symptoms of pain, depression, and trauma, among others. He recounts stories of his musician friends, from Joni Mitchell to Quincy Jones, who had personal experiences feeling healed by music.

According to an essay in The Walrus, Levitin says "Engaging with music, whether as a listener or a player, facilitates entry into the brain's default mode network, a path to the subconscious that is instrumental in everything from problem solving to relaxation, from creativity to immune system function."

A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith

There are lots of movies, television shows and fictional accounts that explore what it would be like to live on Mars, and Elon Musk's SpaceX program has even made it one of their long-term missions. But is it really a good idea to colonize the Red Planet? That's one of the questions Kelly and Zach Weinersmith ask in their 2023 nonfiction book "A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space and Have We Really Thought This Through?"

Kelly, a biologist and podcaster, and Zach, a cartoonist, examine many of the challenges that would make colonization on Mars not just difficult but perhaps impossible. From the planet's inhospitable conditions and sheer isolation to the ethics of space settlement and even international treaties governing outer space, "A City of Mars" carefully lays out the multiple complex hurdles that would face any new settlement and the sacrifices required, and what would need to be done in order to achieve success.

How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi: Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Nite by Chris Balakrishnan and Matt Wasowski

From the founders of the popular Nerd Nite bar lecture events comes this round up of some of their most popular, off-beat science topics. Each essay, written by a different expert, deals with some fascinating, obscure, or silly aspect of science. From the Navy's use of marine mammals to the agony of living with misophonia, these stories remind us that the world is weirder than we think.

Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality by Venki Ramakrishnan

Ramakrishnan shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and heads the Ramakrishnan Lab at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. In this book, he aims to demystify aging, bringing you up to speed on the most recent research into this scary topic. He describes how our cells are in a constant struggle to not only hold off the effects of aging, but also battling the constant threat of cancer. In an interview with The University of Chicago, Ramakrishnan remarks on the paradox that treatments of aging often lead to greater risk of cancer, and that many cancer treatments advance the effects of aging.

The book not only covers the science of aging, but also the history of humanity coming to terms with mortality. He touches on the ethical and societal implications of extending life beyond what is naturally possible.