What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by LadyGeek »

Earl Lemongrab wrote:
LadyGeek wrote:Ancillary Sword, by Anne Leckie. This is the second of three books in the trilogy. I like it.
Yay! I'm through the entire trilogy. Satisfying conclusion.

Started "Swift Edge", the second of series of light detective stories featuring the agency of former Air Force cop Charlotte "Charlie" Swift and her improbable partner, suburban mom GiGi Goldman. Charlie takes on a case of a missing pairs figure skater, with his teenage partner as the client.

Earl
I'm halfway through the third book, Ancillary Mercy, and still going strong.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by MP173 »

Just finished Lisa Scottoline's "Every Fifteen Minutes". This was my first of her novels and I compare her favorably with early Harlan Coban. This book was a real page turner, but I think she had one too many twists in it.

Anyway, I am ready to read more of her books. Any suggestions?

Also finished Lisa Gardner's "Live to Tell". Both were phsycological thrillers.

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by theunknowntech »

Dan Lyons' "Disrupted" is burning up the wire right now, and I read it last week, so dibs.

I hesitate to recommend it here, because Lyons gets some of the finance things wrong, in the expected way. But he does nail some of the cultural excesses of tech startup foo, and hilariously so. Every now and then you need a hit of office politics gone horribly wrong, by gaslight. You've gotta know where to stand when that bolt comes off.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by joebh »

I'm currently re-reading "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein on my Kindle.

Good stuff.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Fallible »

Just started Strangers On A Bridge, the 1964 book by James Donovan on which the 2015 movie, Bridge of Spies, is based and it's excellent so far with good, straightforward writing. Decided to read the book after seeing the movie, also excellent.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by gkaplan »

I just finished reading Last Ditch by Ngaio Marsh.

Young Ricky Alleyn has come to the picturesque fishing village of Deep Cove to write. Through the sleepy little town offers few diversions, Ricky manages to find the most distracting one of all: murder. For in a muddy ditch, he sees a dead equestrienne whose last leap was anything but an accident. When Ricky himself disappears, the case becomes a horse of a different color for his father, Inspector Roderick Alleyn. (Summary taken from an Amazon description.)

This is the 27th book in the Roderick Alleyn series. She would write three more before she passed away in 1982. All these books have been uniformly good, especially the last twenty or so. Yes, they are somewhat dated and have a definitive conservative tone and puritanical outlook, particularly those written in the thirties and forties, but that doesn't detract from the enjoyment I get from reading them.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by pondering »

add this to the #BogleheadsListWiki
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by oragne lovre »

I'm finishing "Aristotle for Everybody" by Mortimer J Adler, and am looking for other books that discuss more about first-principles thinking. Any Bogleheads with recommendation for such books?
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Ben10 »

"Saving Capitalism," by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. A must read! Reich recounts the corporate takeover of the government and the economy. He argues passionately that the dichotomy is not between free market and big government, but rather between a government whose rules are meant to give a level playing field and a government controlled by big business (through campaign contributions, lobbying, and the revolving door between big business and D.C.). The book explains the rapid increase in CEO compensation and why the stock prices continue to rise while the overall economy is flat.

Reich might be a modern day oracle. He prophesies that our current situation, with stagnant middle and lower class and the 1% getting richer, is ripe for a policitical demagogue to play to their worst fears.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by nisiprius »

The Electronic Mind Reader, a Rick Brant Electronic Adventure, by "John Blaine" (Harold L. Goodwin). The later ones in the series, like this one--written after I was reading them as a kid--are available via Project Gutenberg (and thus no-cost Kindle downloads from Amazon). Unfortunately the earlier one are not.

Quite fascinating in a strange way, especially when read in sequence with an "adult" thriller like the Lee Child "Jack Reacher" novels I'm binge-reading. I am now absolutely certain that a standard part of "developing" a thriller must be to have a reader or editor go through it carefully and make notes of loose ends and plot difficulties, so that the writer can then do a second pass and paste bandaids (or, if the writer is really good, duct tape) over them.
"How about the plane?" he asked suddenly. "What did you do with it?"

Scotty motioned to the other side of the houseboat. "It's anchored. I landed next to the JANIG team and got into the rowboat with them." The Sky Wagon carried a small anchor and a few yards of anchor line in one of the pontoons.
I feel sure this was added after some reader said "so what happened to the plane?" There's a lot of that in thriller-adventures. People need to get from point A to point B quickly, and it's easy to leave cars and planes behind if you don't keep track of them.

Naturally, you're wondering how the "electronic mind reader" works. It doesn't read minds in the sense of telepathy. The bad guys, we gradually learn, obtain an EEG from their would-be victim, and then, once they have "read" the EEG, they can use that to... erase the victim's mind. How does it work?
The cyberneticist came to the front of the room... If we have to speculate—and I guess we do—we might guess that sometime, in an enemy EEG laboratory, some experiment resulted in a subject having his mind erased. It was probably an accident that the enemy exploited without knowing how it worked."

"Can't we even guess how it works?" Weiss asked.

"Approximately, without knowing the physiology of it. The EEG recording is simply fed into a gadget that modulates a carrier wave. The carrier is an average frequency for brain patterns. In effect, the thing simply transmits the man's own pattern back to him. Why that should produce trauma of the kind we have seen is a mystery." The scientist gestured to the TV receiver. "The transmitter is incorporated into the TV chassis, and the 'rabbit ears' act as an antenna when adjusted properly. The recorder is a simple EEG mechanism."
How do they secretly obtain an EEG from a victim? Easy. The mysterious barber with the mysterious machine for treating dry hair... the machine whose head-enclosing hood appeared to contain nothing but innocent massage devices.
"Nothing more, Rick. Oh, are you wondering about the barber's machine? Actually, the massage gadgets acted as electrodes, and the massage oil did very well in making good contact. It was a simple setup."
Of course. That conductive massage oil.
his massage machine was wired through to a room in the basement. The wiring went through the power cord into the electric outlet, and the impulses were actually transmitted over the power system and taken out of a plug in the basement. We found the machine where he had stored it."

Rick knew that could be done quite simply. The frequencies of the electric current and the brain patterns were so different that they would not interfere with each other.
And that's fascinating because it's, you know, half-right. But the idea of simply transmitting EEG frequencies, which spread over the range from 1 to 50Hz, directly over power lines and expecting something at the other end to filter out the 60Hz--rather than... well... you know... putting the EEG signals onto an RF carrier which is how analog "carrier current" transmission actually worked... is weird.

An interesting detail is that the bad guys have something to do with a mysterious foreign government, but the government is never named or identified. It is just "the enemy." I'd love to know if Goodwin just didn't want to contribute to the fifties paranoid about "the Russians," or whether he was cleverly keeping it vague so that the book would not become dated if the U.S. switched alliances in the future.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Hayden »

Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge. Great book to motivate me to put down my tablet and go out and exercise. They present science on aging to argue that one can continue to live like a 40 or 50 year old well into one's 80s. The secret is a rigorous exercise regime (along with sensible eating and social interaction).

My nature is to sit in front of a computer all day, so it was useful for me to see the science on the benefits of exercise.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by heartwood »

Hayden wrote:Younger Next Year by Chris Crowley and Henry Lodge. Great book to motivate me to put down my tablet and go out and exercise. They present science on aging to argue that one can continue to live like a 40 or 50 year old well into one's 80s. The secret is a rigorous exercise regime (along with sensible eating and social interaction).

My nature is to sit in front of a computer all day, so it was useful for me to see the science on the benefits of exercise.
I read it over a decade ago. I found it reasoned and sensible. I think back to it often. I still recall a trope from the book that continues to motivate me today. Paraphrased as , you got yourself to work 5 days a week for 35 years, you can get yourself to the gym.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by a »

Books on first principles thinking:

As with just about everything, it all proceeds from a goal.
As Nietzsche said, a goal a straight line.
If you also take some time to work on deciding your life
goal, the optimal books (or other endeavors) to
reach there will become clear.

By first principles you seem to mean the first principles of
philosophy.
Philosophical 'fundamentals' books that come to mind
are the Bible principally the New Testament - i.e. all the
words of Jesus. The parables, do unto others, etc. (You
don't have to believe in God to extract the usefulness of
Jesus's attributed sayings.) I found Plato's Republic a
little interesting. Not much else comes to mind. Perhaps
this is because I found physics, math, evolution, to be
more educative in obtaining the first principles for
morality. Economics too, I'd say.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by kommisarrex »

I just gave up on "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. I had high hopes going into it and wanted to like it, but 100 pages in and I'm done. He's just trying SO HARD to be clever. Or is the fact that it's so over-the-top, that the book itself is the real commentary on entertainment consumption?

Moving on to a "A Spy Among Friends" about the truly despicable Kim Philby.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by TheRightKost87 »

I'm about 80% of the way done with "David vs. Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell. Pretty good overall, but not quite as insightful as some of his other work. Its a series of 7 or 8 separate stories that point out that perceived underdogs might not be at the disadvantaged as we presume.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by market timer »

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by heartwood »

Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo.

Not a Harry Hole story, the protagonist who made Nesbo a known writer outside Norway. I've read all of those and enjoyed them. It has some of the same characters as Blood on Snow, also not a Harry Hole book.

I'm about a hundred pages in and wondering if I should skip to the last chapter to learn the ending. So far it's like reading about corn growing.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Elsebet »

Now reading "The Year of the Flood" which is the second of three in a dystopian series by Margaret Atwood. One of my favorite authors, although parts of this specific book lack the same tautness of her other works.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by jdb »

Now in the third chapter of War and Peace. Very exciting, over 1100 pages to go. Fourth time for this novel, my all time favorite, like meeting old acquaintances, I'm even getting used to their long Russian names.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ensign »

"The Past" by Tessa Hadley and "Work Like Any Other" by Virginia Reeves.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

Campaigning With Grant, by Horace Porter. The author was on General Grant's staff from November 1863 at Chattanooga, Tennessee through the end of the Civil War in April 1865 at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, and gives a personal view of General Grant as a person and leader over those 18 months. I thought that the book was very interesting.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by LadyGeek »

Diplomatic Immunity, by Lois McMaster Bujold. A continuation of the Vorkosigan Saga. I like it.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by chuckb84 »

Now that I live in the desert southwest, I'm rereading the prescient book "Cadillac Desert". If you want to understand the west, read about water policy.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by snowshoes »

The Third Wave : by Steve Case/AOLs founder....
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by nisiprius »

The Wolf of Wall Street, by Jordan Belfort. I'm not proud of myself for enjoying it and thinking it's funny--very much in the same way as the film was--but I am. What intrigues me is that in my opinion it is very skillfully written. It reminds me of Carl Hiassen's novels. It's very well-constructed, the pace is good, it's full of memorable wisecracks.
A thin film of perspiration was all that separated us....
I had little desire to lie to my wife about my money-laundering activities.... But she was my wife, which meant she had the right to be lied to.
In the light of Madoff's future activities, this is interesting to me:
It was just another in a long line of ill-conceived trading policies that all but assured that every new issue coming out on the NASDAQ would be manipulated in one way or another....
Just why the NASD had created a playing field that so clearly [cheated] the customer was something I'd thought about often, and I'd come to the conlusion that the NASD was a self-regulatory agency, "owned" by the very brokerage firms themselves.
I almost think it has to have been ghostwritten, but can find no scrap of evidence that it was.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by carolinaman »

Just read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis. This was a great and interesting read. I was already familiar with the issues and failings of the sub-prime mortgage debacle, but it was really interesting to read about how these three unconventional groups of outsiders figured out the fallacy of the sub-prime mess and bet against it and won big time. It was also disturbing about how greedy, manipulative and stupid most of Wall Street was about this. It is ironic that most of the people who caused this mess walked away with huge sums of money.

According to the author, the root problem is that the big Wall Street firms are all now corporations and their speculative gambles are risks to their shareholders and ultimately, the Federal government for these too big to fail firms. If that happens, they simply walk away from the mess with their fortunes, leaving the government to fix it. Simply put, their incentives or the risk/reward is out of kilter. That problem still exists and will no doubt cause financial crisis again and again.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by nisiprius »

carolinaman wrote:Just read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis...
Since you're fresh from having read the book, I'd like to know what you think of the claim, seen in various places online, that "Peter Schiff’s epic prediction of the 2008 crash inspired the Academy Award-winning film, The Big Short." I can't remember Schiff even being mentioned in the book or the movie. Does he play a significant role in the book? Were Michael Burry, etc. followers of Schiff?

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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by FreeAtLast »

I'm only posting this recommendation here because I know there are more than a few old math majors extant in Boglehead land:
The Norton History of the Mathematical Sciences, Ivor Grattan-Guiness, W.W. Norton and Co., First American Edition 1998.

If you are looking for deep biographies of the great mathematicians, then this book is not for you. For those, start with Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell or The Short History of Mathematics by W.W.R. Ball. The Norton History is good for determining Who did What and When in mathematics. I particularly liked the detailed section comparing the approaches of Newton vs. Leibniz in their conceptions of the Calculus. Another excellent section delivered an analysis of the creation of the subject of Thermodynamics; a lot of brilliant hands were involved in stirring that particular hotpot! Don't expect to finish this book in a weekend marathon - because it completes its survey in a very thorough 761 pages.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Dantes »

Robert Graves The Greek Myths. I've read a fair number of his books ( Goodbye to All That and I, Claudius were both, at different times and for different reasons, important books for me ), but I'd never taken a look at this before. Its definitely NOT a simple collection of Greek myths; there are more footnotes and analysis than tales; more like J. G. Frazer or Joseph Campbell than a collection of tales. Very interesting, and should I ever encounter a Greek God I will definitely run for cover.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by rakornacki1 »

Swiped by Adam Levin
An easy-to-read summary of identity theft and how to prevent & monitor your own. I really liked his 'tips' and advice on how to protect your Personal Identity Information. I found it very useful and will implement many of these tips.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by carolinaman »

nisiprius wrote:
carolinaman wrote:Just read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis...
Since you're fresh from having read the book, I'd like to know what you think of the claim, seen in various places online, that "Peter Schiff’s epic prediction of the 2008 crash inspired the Academy Award-winning film, The Big Short." I can't remember Schiff even being mentioned in the book or the movie. Does he play a significant role in the book? Were Michael Burry, etc. followers of Schiff?

Image
Image
I do not recall his name being mentioned and he was not listed in book index which is quite extensive. Burry started as a value investor and studied Graham and Buffett early on, but as I recall, he relied almost exclusively on his own analytical ability, which were quite amazing.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

After the Funeral, by Agatha Christie.

After the funeral of the rich uncle/brother, suspicions arise about his death, there is dissatisfaction with his will, and other family members start dying.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by snowshoes »

Supermoney : by Adam Smith, A advocate of free markets and the invisible hand, he quotes "Do what you do best and trade for the rest". Smith advocates that the UKs "Bailout" of the East India Trade co., being to big to fail in 1773 with its governmental Tea TAX allowances on the USA, its colonies at the time was somewhat responsible for the American Revolution.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Valuethinker »

snowshoes wrote:Supermoney : by Adam Smith, A advocate of free markets and the invisible hand, he quotes "Do what you do best and trade for the rest". Smith advocates that the UKs "Bailout" of the East India Trade co., being to big to fail in 1773 with its governmental Tea TAX allowances on the USA, its colonies at the time was somewhat responsible for the American Revolution.
Now I am really confused.

Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher who wrote The Wealth of Nations. It is seen as a defence of free markets, but many of the author's moral and philosophical arguments are ignored by commentators.

"Adam Smith" was a Wall Street commentator who wrote a series of books about money in the 70s & early 80s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Goodman

The Money Game was the really good one (1968)
Supermoney was a less successful sequel (1972)
The Money Game (1981)
The Roaring 80s where he worries about the 80s debt fuelled excesses-- presciently, as the S&L debacle etc. was just ahead, leaving a nasty recession in the early 1990s

You appear to have confused the 2 authors in your post?
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Valuethinker »

snowshoes wrote:Supermoney : by Adam Smith, A advocate of free markets and the invisible hand, he quotes "Do what you do best and trade for the rest". Smith advocates that the UKs "Bailout" of the East India Trade co., being to big to fail in 1773 with its governmental Tea TAX allowances on the USA, its colonies at the time was somewhat responsible for the American Revolution.
The alternative to the EIC was, of course, simply to take over India as a government property-- this was the Age of Imperialism and if we didn't take India, France would have-- it was to our commercial and strategic advantage to have it, so we took it. After the Indian Mutiny (1854), this was done. So the tradeoff was corporate power runs India as a vassal state (EIC had its own Army, set its own laws etc.) or the British government does so directly.

We cannot, as historians, in general judge the actions of the past by our current morals and values. The past is literally a different country.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Valuethinker »

carolinaman wrote:
nisiprius wrote:
carolinaman wrote:Just read "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis...
Since you're fresh from having read the book, I'd like to know what you think of the claim, seen in various places online, that "Peter Schiff’s epic prediction of the 2008 crash inspired the Academy Award-winning film, The Big Short." I can't remember Schiff even being mentioned in the book or the movie. Does he play a significant role in the book? Were Michael Burry, etc. followers of Schiff?

Image
Image
I do not recall his name being mentioned and he was not listed in book index which is quite extensive. Burry started as a value investor and studied Graham and Buffett early on, but as I recall, he relied almost exclusively on his own analytical ability, which were quite amazing.
I would give you long odds The Big Short does not mention Peter Schiff. This is spin by Schiff or by someone on his behalf.

Michael Burry, a neurologist, eventually diagnoses himself as having Asperger's. An almost perfect example of why Asperger's remains in the gene pool- it conveys survival advantage to the group as a whole.

Think Fiver in Watership Down-- the seer. Hazel is the leader (and not just the biggest or strongest rabbit, as in other burrows), Fiver is the one who can see the future-- the shaman, feared. Hazel is the one who pulls them all together.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by MP173 »

Two recent books:

Matthew Klein - "Switchback" about a Silicon Valley hedge fund operator who's fund melts down and his wife commits suicide. Not very good.
Howard Lewis - "Derailed by Bankruptcy" A memior by the primary lawyer for the Reading Railroad bankruptcy administrator and his 9 year battle to maximize value for the creditors. Short book (130 pages) for those who are interested in railroad history and the Penn Central/eastern railroad collapse in the 70s which led to Conrail.

Currently reading "Why Bernie Sanders Matters" by Harry Jaffe. No comment as it is a political book as I do not wish to be sent to the penalty box.

Ed
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by abuss368 »

Another one of Jack Bogle's excellent investment books is on my radar next!
John C. Bogle: “Simplicity is the master key to financial success."
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

Cadillac Desert, by Marc Reisner.

This book is a recap of dam building and water projects in the Western US. This is the most negative book I have read in a long time. The author seems to think that almost everyone living West of Iowa is a fool a knave or both, including but not limited to farmers, ranchers, developers, city dwellers, liberals, conservatives, lawyers, engineers, Mormons, politicians of all stripes starting with Theodore Roosevelt, and especially the Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by denismurf »

I'm halfway through Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Subtitle is "A Brief History of Humankind."

For me, this is slow going, but well worth the time and effort. Harari lays out stages of human development in ways I've never thought of before, particularly in describing the agricultural revolution and the spread of religion as an adjunct to empire building.

There's also just enough humor to bring one down to earth frequently. Did you know, for example, that wheat domesticated humans, not the other way around?

This is one of those books I'll probably have to read again to digest properly.
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by LadyGeek »

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, by Lois McMaster Bujold. This is a side story of the Vorkosigan Saga, where Miles is not the main character. It's space opera, but in this case more opera than space. Meh.
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Wildebeest
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Wildebeest »

"GRIT The power of Passion and perseverance " by Angela Duckworth.

Great non fiction. Highly recommended: Five stars.

Page turner, chuckful of great vignets/ studies with scientific underpinnings as to what leads to excellence. ( spoiler alert: IQ, talent, good looks are overrated compared to grit)

She is a great writer and her book is so much better than her TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duc ... ccess_grit
The Golden Rule: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
bondsr4me
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by bondsr4me »

I am reading a couple now...

"Charlie Munger The Complete Investor"...Tren Griffin

"The Intelligent Investor"..Ben Graham (Jason Zweig)

"Bonds The Unbeaten Path To Secure Investment Growth"..Hildy & Stan Michelson

I enjoy them all.

Don
Franko1966
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Franko1966 »

Investing Made Simple by Mike Piper...my second reading of it...I would highly recommend it especially to new investors!
Non7WoodUser
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Non7WoodUser »

Stranger in a Strange Land
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ruralavalon
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by ruralavalon »

On the Border with Crook, by Robert J Bourke. "[Y]ou can never know a man until after having made a scout with him in bad weather."

The author was a staff officer with General Crook during the Apache Wars in Southern Arizona and the Sioux Wars in Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana in the 1870's and 1898's. More than a description of battles, the book vividly describes Army life, frontier life and landscape.

"We had become part and parcel of the garrison of Old Camp Grant, the memory of which is still fragrant as that of the most forlorn parody ypoon a military garrison in the most woe-begone of military departments, Arizona." "[T]he thermometer [was] rarely under the nineties even in the winter at noon, and often climbing up to and over the 120 notch . . . ." "There was a story current that the heat had one time become so excessive that two thermometers had to be strapped together to let the mercury have room to climb." "There were all kinds of methods of killing the hours. One that interested everybody for a while was the battles which we stirred up between the nests of red and black ants, which could be found in plenty and great size close to the post." "ome of the snake stories of Arizona may have been a trifle exaggerated, but then we had no fish, and a man must have something upon which to let his imagination have full swing. . . ."

"Duppa was credited with being the wild, harum-scarum son of an English family of respectability, . . . . . Rumor had it that Duppa spoke several languages -- French, Spanish, Italian, German -- and that he understood the classics, and that, when sober he used faultless English." "What caused me most wonder was why Duppa had ever concluded to live in such as forlorn spot; the best answer I could get was that the Apaches had attacked him the moment he was approaching the banks of the Agua Fria, and that after he repulsed them he thought he would stay there merely to let them know he could do it."

"An occasional buffalo head, bleaching in the sun, gave a still more ghastly tone to the landscape. Every few minute a sprarie dog projected his head above the entrance to his domicile and barked at our cortege passing by." " The most elastic interpretation was given to the word 'uniform', so as to permit individual taste and experience to have full play in the selection of garments which were to protect from bitter cold and fierce wind."

On entering the Big Horn Mountains, "here and there a steak of darkness betrayed the attempts of the tall pines trees on the summit to penetrate to the open air above them. Heavy belts of forest covered the sides of the range below the snow line, and extended along the skirts of the foot-hills well out onto the plains below. The singing of the meadow-larks, and the chirping of thousands of grasshoppers enlivened the morning air; save for these no sound broke the stillness, except the rumbling of wagons slowly creeping along the road."

"Rattlesnakes began to emerge from their winter seclusion, and to appear again in society; Lieutenant Lemly found an immense one coiled up in his blankets, and waked with yells for help."

"Mr. John Finerty killed his first Buffalo, which appeared to be a very good specimen at the time, but after perusing the description given by Finerty in the columns of the Times, several weeks later, we saw that it must have been at east eleven feet high and weighed not much less than nine thousand pounds."
Last edited by ruralavalon on Tue May 24, 2016 4:11 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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reggiesimpson
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by reggiesimpson »

Art of the Deal by Donald Trump.
A very engaging read.
Loon11
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Loon11 »

Just finished the Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Great book
TimDex
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by TimDex »

Reading several British mysteries by Peter Grainger. Well done police procedurals. I believe they are privately published on Amazon kindle, for about three or four bucks each. Well written, and compared to the far fetched drivel I've just been reading by name authors, worth double the price. If you're a mystery fan, try one. Start with An Accidental Death. Tim
"All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone. " -- Pascal
Broken Man 1999
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Re: What Book Are You Currently Reading? Part VI

Post by Broken Man 1999 »

Just received The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy by Mervyn King.

I bought it after reading an interview in Bloomberg Business Week.

He certainly should know his way around the subject, given his service as Governor of the Bank of England.

I'm looking forward to his take on the very wide subject of the global economy.

Broken Man 1999
“If I cannot drink Bourbon and smoke cigars in Heaven then I shall not go." - Mark Twain
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