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What are you reading currently?


prunes

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I've just added a few to my to-read list: http://www.businessinsider.com/5-books-to-read-before-your-30th-birthday-2013-12

 

1. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (started to read this my sophomore year of college but never finished it. I hear it's a must-read)

2. Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger (don't know anything about it but have heard of it)

3. Letters from a Stoic (already on my to-read list -- everyone who has read it has great things to say about it)

4. The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, A Roman Soldier (not sure about this one -- can anyone recommend it?)

5. The Essays of Warren Buffett (I have a heavily-marked-up version and refer to it often; I would hope all of you have read this or the actual letters)

 

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus is in the public domain.  You can read/download it here:

 

https://archive.org/details/moralsayingspub00lymagoog

 

It's not bad, but it's no Letters from a Stoic.  It's basically just a bunch of wise one liners taken from Publius Syrus's comedy/slapstick genre (from what I understand) plays.

 

It's very short.  If you've got time it's probably worth checking out.

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I noticed Cundill's There is Always Something to Do was mentioned a few times. I have this on order from Amazon. It is highly recommended by Michael Price. (For anyone not familiar with Michael Price, he worked for Max Heine and was Seth Klarman's mentor) See his recent speech at an investment conference, he discusses the book in the very beginning. I recommend the entire video, he goes into great detail on his investment approach, specifically related to two stocks. I especially liked his take on Hospiria when the share price collapsed.

 

http://www.marketfolly.com/2013/06/michael-prices-presentation-from-london.html

 

I also just started Origins of Architectural Pleasure by Hildebrand...completely different topic, a great book

 

 

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"Most of the original, annual editions of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack in the Rare Books section of The Library of Congress.  :)"

 

twacowfca, does the original, annual editions of Poor Richard´s Almanack differ from the normal Poor Richard´s Almanack?

I love reading Poor Richard´s Almanack and thinking about it.

 

A few years ago at a Berkshire Annual Meeting I talked to Munger and in one question I inverted the sentence: "An empty bag stand seldom upright" to "A full bag stand mostly upright".

 

He liked that.  :)

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I'm rereading Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst, written by Merrill's former telecom analyst, largely focused on Grubman and the transgressions of analyst conflicts up to and through the dot com era. Good look into the myriad conflicts of interest and incentive structures that in many cases remain in place today - albeit now with a few pages of disclosures at the end of each report.

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  • 3 months later...

Half way through:

 

 

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KdtLbciNL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

 

And about to start:

 

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ayxbxAQDL.jpg

 

The last one is for tips on how to deal with entrenched CEOs :)

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Listening to the Passage of Power, the Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A Caro.  It is fascinating.  It has the good and the warts of the man. As My wife said we were too busy working at several jobs and going to college to realize all that was going on at the time.  It starts at JFK's assignation.

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Guest deepValue

Listening to the Passage of Power, the Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A Caro.  It is fascinating.  It has the good and the warts of the man. As My wife said we were too busy working at several jobs and going to college to realize all that was going on at the time.  It starts at JFK's assignation.

 

I have all four of Caro's LBJ books in the queue. Everyone I talk to says they are excellent.

 

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Guest deepValue

deepvalue,

In places he gets a little long winded, but seems to have really researched LBJ.  I like to listen to historical types of books on long drives.  If I were reading in evening, I would probably dose off in parts of it.  ;D

 

Yeah, I anticipated that; I have the audiobooks to take on two 23-hour flights I have coming up.

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Just finished Confidence Game, about Bill Ackman's MBIA short.

 

How did you like it? It certainly made me appreciate how much work Ackman puts into his ideas...

 

I thought it was great. I agree that you appreciate how much work he put it's in. I think he read about 150,000 pages of material for this trade. But you also get to appreciate the conviction, perseverance, and courage it takes to pull something like this off.

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Just finished Confidence Game, about Bill Ackman's MBIA short.

 

After reading this one and Einhorn's book, you have to wonder how much it pays to be publicly shorting a stock. IMO, its much less painful do the research and wait to short into an decline.

 

In hindsight I'd say that's easy but you have to be good at timing and forecasting macro factors, both of which are nearly impossible. And then you may not get the benefit of buying so cheaply.

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  • 2 months later...

I never really could read more than one book at once, so here are the books I read recently (most from March to now)

 

A Farewell to Arms

For whom the bell tolls

Snowball

Maltese Falcon

The Little Book of Talent

Titan (Rockefeller)

Devil in the White City

Lolita

Moonwalking with Einstein

Talent is Overrated

The Postman Always Rings Twice

House of Morgan

 

I am in the middle of Predictably Irrational (good so far) and expect to be done with it fairly shortly.  Also, I am trying to read about Fiat a lot.

 

Here's what I read since this post, bolded ones are highly recommended and a few random thoughts:

 

How Will You Measure Your Life?

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

In the Plex

The Thief

Engineers of Victory

Reamde

King of Capital

Poor Charlie's Almanac

The Power of Habit - I am interested the psychological underpinnings of consumer choices/goods so the beginning of the book was very interesting

 

When Genius Failed - I see more parallels in the fixed income world between now and the 90s than equities (despite everyone's contention that we are in tech bubble 2.0).  A lot of spreads (all kinds not just high yield) seem to be very tight and vol is low.

 

Blood Meridian

All the devils are here

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

Confessions of a sociopath

The Outsiders

Creativity Inc

The Extra 2%

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

A Splendid Exchange - Made me much more interested in economics role in history

The Second Machine Age - Very good book on the role of automation in the economy and how it affects inequality

The Most Powerful Idea in the World

Double Your Profits - Must read for managers

The Box

Influence

The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014

How to win friends - Easy to see why this book has been recommended for years

Hooked

Risk Savvy - How heuristics can be helpful. Potentially more to say on this one.

 

Too bad this topic hasn't been added to in 6 months; it gave me a lot of good ideas...

 

Just finished a 1998 biography of Larry Ellison. Highly entertaining read despite the lousy title. Focuses on the Oracle years (Ellison was already in his 30s when he started Oracle)

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516b-vSbh8L._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

 

 

This title made me laugh.

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