January 2025: My Month in Books
#BookDNA
I read—a lot. I don’t discriminate between formats: posts, articles, books, journals (peer-reviewed and otherwise), or audiobooks. There’s a method to my insatiable quest for input. I don’t seek to hoard knowledge for leverage. Instead, I read to expand my awareness. Perhaps, at some subconscious level, that is a kind of leverage—but the story I tell myself is that I read so much because I’m acutely aware of how much I don’t know. That awareness grows daily.
I can’t scan everything at once—though I often think about what that would mean, the intended and unintended consequences of such access and capability. (I explored this in a post about my 2025 word of the year: Attention.) Instead, I usually have a guiding project, research request, or client needs shaping my focus. That influences my reading habits, the rabbit holes I explore, and how I dedicate time to sense-making.
Not everything I read is interesting or useful. But what I dismiss, someone else might find valuable. Instead of overwhelming you with a laundry list, I’ll curate a monthly selection of books with #BookDNA quality and meaningful connections. You can find more elsewhere if you’re curious about how I make connections, research, and work out loud.
Additionally, I’ll share a second post each month that connects reading material to my ‘Take CARE to Be CALM’ approach. These posts will reflect how I read like a writer, write like a reader, and think about reshaping the health of our online and physical spaces for connection, communication, collaboration, and community.
Now that you know what to expect, maybe give it a try—subscribe, engage, and share your recommendations. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Let’s broaden our thinking together.
Books That Stood Out This Month
📖 Death of an Author – Nnedi Okorafor - A layered, provocative novel that explores the ethics of storytelling, authorship, and the power dynamics of who gets to tell a story. I read this in one sitting on its release day, and it’s been on my mind ever since. Okorafor shares in the acknowledgments that she’s wanted to write this story for 30 years but needed time to be ready. It shows. The nested narratives invite confrontation—with our assumptions, privilege, and responsibility for storytelling itself. This book significantly prompted me to rethink how I spend my time, attention, and energy as a communicator.
📖 This is StrategyL Make Better Plans – Seth Godin - A concise, insightful look at how strategy is fundamentally about choices—who we serve, how we show up, and where we invest our focus. I re-read this after listening to a recent podcast interview with Godin, which prompted me to grab my copy and share a highlighted passage with a colleague. Even though I originally read it late last year, I found myself going through the entire book again with fresh eyes. This time, I focused on how I’m approaching 2025—making intentional choices about my attention, who I engage with, and how I put my professional toolkit into practice rather than relying on the comfortable or convenient. This book will serve as one of the frameworks for organizing my ‘Take CARE to be CALM’ #BookDNA recommendations in the months ahead.
📖 Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back – Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias - An investigation into how big tech’s data collection practices mirror historical colonialism and what can be done to resist. This book helped me think more critically about how memory and history are shaped—and reshaped—through digital technologies. It was recently featured on my 2024 #BookDNA list. I revisited the text and its bibliography to explore updated ways of assessing digital data collection readiness and maturity.
More soon. In the meantime, what have you been reading? Let’s compare notes.
Onward and happy reading!