I’ve been lately dwelling on the past less often than I might’ve hitherto. Recalling information is what helps not lose it. This article is my way to recap my reads and studies during the year to hopefully fight information loss, keep a record, and map the dots. Some shape always gets formed.
The Great Gatsby
Peak literature.
The Intelligent Investor
This is the second time I study this. Masterful work and overview of the investment field. Sound ideas to approach it.
Silent Spring
Environmental consequences of our abuse of fertilizers and why our mistreating the earth is hurting ecosystems. (1970s)
The Grapes of Wrath
There’s an idea in the preface I’ll forever remember: ‘I’m assailed by my own ignorance. No one knows how ill-suited and lazy my mind really is aside from me. I constantly combat this’. (Steinbeck - Nobel laureate). At times, this book cuts deep.
Lessons from the Titans
How little gains in efficiency, better operations, and getting the broad picture right can lead to huge success. You don’t need to create the iPhone to do well in business. Similar to The Outsiders.
The Screwtape Letters
A very clever way to write about how to live well and not drift toward hell. Can’t remember many details though.
Built From Scratch
Best business biography I’ve ever read. All of the ideas I might’ve read about, these guys applied to build a $300bn company. An astounding number of insights as to how to sensibly run an organization.
The Art of Power
Amazing individual and politician. Potential role model in so many ways. Extremely cultivated and likeable person, deep thinker across the board, and a doer.
The Life and Selected Writings of Jefferson
I needed to dive deeper into his ideas. His writings give a sense of how much he cared and thought about matters related to the soul. Jefferson reminded me of Oppenheimer.
A Man for All Markets
Brilliant individual, but I didn’t like the writing. Some ideas I can’t get out of my mind: (1) Tweaking a problem slightly can turn it from impossible to possible; (2) Education is software for the brain; (3) “If I don’t have an edge, I don’t play.”
The Snowball
This lets you see other sides of Warren. An extremely calm, erudite appearance hides a high-energy, highly ambitious and tough-to-deal-with individual.
The Power Law
An account of Silicon Valley’s history. A number of insights on how different VC firms and investors have approached it, and how founders view of VC firms has changed over time. I don’t remember much detail.
The Days of the Revolution
History book covering what led to the independence in Argentina. I didn’t like it at all.
Made in America
Sam Walton was among the best past-century entrepreneurs. Extremely hard working and thoughtful person. An interesting idea: when everyone was saying that Walmart was destroying local stores, he reframed it as saying that Walmart was winning because it was actually saving money for consumers. ‘Those stores were destined to perish’.
Buffett Letters (2002)
I read slightly over a decade of Buffett’s letters. Astonishingly instructive in investing and accounting matters.
The Paradox of Choice
Why options for everything have tended to increase and why that paralyzes us. Unnecessary book, nothing new and it’s already old.
The Double Helix
The process of discovering the Double Helix in DNA. Watson describes the journey; 2-yr long rollercoaster of emotions. Reminds me of what Feynman spoke about.
American Prometheus
The Manhattan project, WWII, occurred less than 100 years ago. What a group of coordinated geniuses can accomplish. How fragile things really are.
Magicians of the Gods
What if history has been misinterpreted? What if things started earlier? Are we missing out on important insights just because of complacency and human bias?
Slaughterhouse-Five
Never connected with Vonnegut.
Norwegian Wood
This hurt. A young girl’s boyfriend commits suicide. She’s a deep thinker and feels pain so within her she can’t escape it. Tries to fall in love and it unleashes a chain of sorrow she can’t bear.
Animal Farm
Quite clever. How politicians race against one another. How crowds are fooled. How vanity and mischief creep in at the top. Nowhere near 1984.
Lessons of History
This book pleasantly surprised me. I thought its thesis of ‘summarizing history and drawing lessons therefrom’ was impossible to execute well. They surprised me.
One thing that stuck: There’s a newcomer politician who argues in favor of going with a win-win deal with a rival nation. The old general goes on to say, ‘Son, you’ve learned nothing from history’.
White Nights
I think I read this for the third or fourth time. I don’t know, still can’t understand.
The Scientists
Starting with Copernicus (?), Gribbin goes on to tell the story of how science progressed, how ideas were formed, and who were the thinkers. Thesis is amazing; execution was bad.
Ice Age
Great account of how interglacial cycles occur. Big idea in here: Identify the 3 factors that move the needle. In climate change throughout millennia, it was: eccentricity of the orbit, tilt of the axis, axial precession (?).
Leonardo Da Vinci (Isaacson)
Astounding individual. Peak curiosity and talent well cultivated. Depicts how far people can go. Breadth of interests and how to intersect them. How to use Drawing for thinking purposes.
Leonardo Da Vinci: The Complete Works
Works of art, some notes from his journals, and drawings.
Punctuated Equilibrium
Amazing thesis, disastrous execution. Thesis: Darwin was right, but wrong. Evolution is not linear nor gradual; it happens in a few concentrated periods of time.
The Gulag Archipelago
‘To stand up for the truth is nothing: for the truth you have to sit in jail.” An account of a survivor from the Russian Gulags in the 20th century. Deeply disturbing, though half of it was something like a trial, which got boring.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
I’m more inclined to think Keynes was crazy in what he posited, yet his approach was extremely sensible and correct: ‘We’ve been stagnated, we don’t know how to get out of this mess [depression], we need new ideas’.
Anna Karenina
I was expecting a masterpiece, and I think that was my mistake. Has many bright moments, indeed extremely bright some, but nothing crazy. Last chapter hit the hardest: there was this guy who was a deep thinker and momentarily got the grasp of what everything meant. But every time he tried to rationalize it or think it through, he lost that grasp. It takes courage.
Richer, Wiser, Happier
Good to get a sense of how great investors think and act. But Munger, Buffett, and Graham have influenced them all, so after reading these, there’s not much new.
Unfinished Reads
Elements of Chemistry Left it half-way through after I drifted outside of science.
Faust I occasionally return to this, but I haven’t read any literature in a while.
Call Me Ted Ted Turner autobio, started it this past week.