The house is smallish and cozy and well-lit and every wall that can reasonably have bookshelves on it does. The carpet is deep blue and very soft.

"What a nice house."

"It's designed to be your ideal house."

"What a nice piece of magic!"

He pokes his head through a door into what turns out to be the kitchen. It has nice broad countertops and a stove and a microwave and None Whatsoever of his floormates' possessions. Lovely.

"It's important that you be comfortable."

Bruce doesn't really know what to do with that statement so he's just going to leave it alone and look at his new books. Some of them look like econ books!

The lack of internet is the only drawback this place seems to have, and he has so much research to do on subjects that haven't been discussed online that he can probably cross that bridge when he gets to it. 

"I wonder how the magic picks the books. It clearly knows my tastes, but it's also heard of books I haven't. And now I'm wondering if my preference for accuracy in my nonfiction means my library can be used for objective truth, or if it's going off what I'm likely to enjoy reading."

"...probably enjoyment but it would be worth testing it to find out if we could figure out how?"

"At some point when I'm more caught up on my Christmas-related responsibilities I can work my way through the nonfiction and look for books that contradict each other's main theses, or make claims that have been solidly disconfirmed. I doubt any book is going to be one hundred percent accurate, but I can see if they're likely to be more accurate than a random nonmagical collection."

"That sounds really fun."

"You're welcome to join in if you like, there are plenty of books! But first I should probably look at what the Christmas Spirit is doing."

"Well," Lev says, "let's walk to Christmas Headquarters."

What an excellent name. "Okay!" And off they go.

He's going to see a secret polar city! Will it be cold? Hopefully it won't be full-on arctically cold, he's not remotely dressed for it. He's sort of expecting it to be decorated for Christmas year-round.

Of course it's decorated for Christmas year-round, what do you take them for, amateurs?

He can tell it's cold-- snowflakes are falling and the wind is whipping-- but he feels like he's walking on a nice sunny day.

Most of the elves are younger than Lev: an eight-year-old carries packages, a ten-year-old and a five-year-old are arguing enthusiastically, a twelve-year-old is going for a jog. 

Heck yeah Christmas decorations! 

"The weather magic here is really awesome, snowy and warm is a great combination when it doesn't mean slush."

"That's all you, Santa."

"Neat! I hope I didn't change it too much from whatever you were used to." Also being addressed as Santa is extremely weird but he's just going to roll with it.

"No, I mean, impervious to cold is all you. If a normal human were here they'd freeze."

"Ohhhh that makes so much more sense, I feel like an idiot now. But at least I'm an idiot who can't get frostbite!" He scoops up a handful of snow and tosses it in the air where it won't land on anybody, just to watch it sparkle.

This Santa is excited by many things and he is very cute. 

Soon he shall be excited by Christmas Headquarters, which has a certain air of being a lavishly decorated minor government building. 

Elves presumably have four thousand years of architectural tradition; he's mostly surprised that he can categorize it at all. But that doesn't make it not exciting; what's inside?

A lot of extremely busy six-year-olds looking through inboxes that are as tall as they are.

"So, how old is grown up, for an elf?" He knows elves are kids at some point, Lev mentioned elf kids going to school, but for all he knows they come of age at a hundred.

"Thirty-five."

"Huh. So everyone here is probably older than me, then, unless elf kids can handle office jobs better than human teenagers."

"Fully-grown elves look like humans somewhat between the age of five and fifteen."

"Huh! That seems really random. Is it heritable?"