The Books/Reading Thread

[Badbird]

^ Good book there sevag00


The General Theory of Employment, Interest & Money by John Maynard Keynes

 

[Zephyrus]

Reading these two for a grad class. I love philosophy of history.

 

[Einherjar86]

The General Theory of Employment, Interest & Money by John Maynard Keynes

Read Friedrich Hayek, it might make you smarter.

 

[sevag00]

^ Good book there sevag00

lol wat. I doubt you've actually read that book. It's not for the average 15 year old.

 

[King Richard]

@Einherjar: I just listened to your acoustic music, that shit is good my friend. You need to make an album, I'll buy one.

 

[Badbird]

Read Friedrich Hayek, it might make you smarter.

Nah, I will stick to one of the best economist of all time.

 

[Der Morgenstern]

lol economists

 

[Einherjar86]

@Einherjar: I just listened to your acoustic music, that shit is good my friend. You need to make an album, I'll buy one.

Thanks dude, I appreciate it. I seriously hope to someday. I've been writing material for years, so I have enough; but the recordings I have aren't quite the quality that I'd like them to be. Those ones on the myspace page sound the best.

 

[Badbird]

@Einherjar: I just listened to your acoustic music, that shit is good my friend. You need to make an album, I'll buy one.

.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Now I feel bad for not having listened to this yet.

 

[The Ozzman]

Glad you picked it up! How far have you gotten so far? I got about 1/10 thru on my flights last week, but I've been lazy since.

From what I've read so far it seems like the 'lesson' of the book is actually really brief -- i.e. something along the lines of "just find the net company book value and divide by value of the sum of their shares, the other 99.99999% of this book is about why you shouldn't do all this other shit people talk about". I assume they go into some protip stuff later on, but I wonder how many people actually live by that one value investing technique. Have you seen any numbers in the book yet with specific cases of it working? I'd kinda like to see them list a few stocks they identified as undervalued back in the day and what kinda ROI they've yielded in the years since -- not sure how much that would really prove though.

The question of stocks vs. bonds and how much of each is an interesting one, I'd never really given any thought to bonds before. Kinda bothers me that even Graham et al couldn't really make up their minds on it, haha.

Bonds are a good investment, but it's hard to actually invest in any unless you invest in a bond mutual fund or you have a shit ton of money to buy a bunch. They are the principal investment for insurance company portfolios because of the constant, non-changing (amount wise) coupon payments that are used to fund definite future risks of paying out claims (for deaths or accidents or what have you). I think I've allocated about 10% of my 401k investment into the bond fund currently administered by the company where I work (just so I have some 'guaranteed' ROI).

The chief thing you have to remember about bond investment is the inverse relationship between bond value and interest rates. If the interest rates increase, then the bond value will decrease and vice versa.

 

[TheInsane]

I have barely begun reading this book but so far so good. It relies heavily on history that I am not familiar with but the ideas seem to be clear anyway. Human nature and how to rule and govern.

 

[Blind Guardian]

Revered former Metal Maniacs editor Jeff Wagner analyzes the heady side of metal in this exhaustive history of a relentlessly ambitious musical subculture. Beginning with 1970s progressive rock acts Rush and King Crimson, Mean Deviation unfurls a colorful tapestry of sounds and styles, from the “Big Three” of 1980s prog metal—Queensrÿche, Fates Warning, and Dream Theater—to extreme pioneers Voivod, Watchtower, and Celtic Frost. The flirtation between heavy metal and progressive rock grows with bold creative leaps, spawning countless valiant launches toward infinity. Today, the spark of inspiration thrives in obscure outposts such as Scandinavia, Florida, and Japan, bursting into full flame with the successes of prog metal overlords Opeth, Meshuggah, Tool, Between the Buried and Me, and their progressive peers.

According to Wagner: “Mean Deviation highlights many impossibly scattered bands and movements that widened the scope of the heavy metal genre. To some, progressive metal starts with Dream Theater and ends with an interminable stream of bands that sound like Dream Theater. By my interpretation, the term ‘progressive metal’ allows for consideration of cosmic post-black metal band In the Woods, avant-garde metal surrealists Thought Industry, and those obscure purveyors of corrupted Swedish death metal, Carbonized-along with more obvious entries such as Fates Warning, Opeth, and, of course, Dream Theater.

“One thing prog metal certainly is, is metal. Hard and bold and brash, but refined, adulterated, and mutated; it is heavy metal taken somewhere illuminating and sometimes bizarre.”

Has anyone read this book?

 

[King Richard]

Sounds like my kind of book.

 

[Addo_Of_Nex]

Hoping to plow through these during break:

I've read a couple of summary books on the Godel proof, going to give an obnoxiously slow stab at the actual thing. I'll also be giving the Tractatus a second whirl at a pace of about 5 pages per hour, ideally.

 

[Zephyrus]

Nice, I'm going to start my vacation reading by tackling Voltaire's Candide in the original French.

 

[Akirahito]

You're ambitious. I tried reading The Canterbury Tales in it's original Middle English once.

 

[The Ozzman]

Sweet book, although I don't like the format of the second half, with all the letters. Roadshow is great too, I want to re-read his stuff at some point.

Finished this today. I thought the way he formatted the second half the book made it go faster than the first half. I would like to try just driving across the country at some point (I've wanted to do it for a while, but legal issues have been holding me back right now)

 

[stephahnie]

I'm currently reading 'The Compound Effect' for work. Gotta love a good self help book.

 

[Zephyrus]

So I decided I'm going to attempt Also Sprach Zarathustra in the original German over vacation. I read the first chapter and got the grammar alright. Just need the dictionary frequently.

Also, going to read Voltaire's Candide in French. That will be a good deal easier.