I think I’ll just rewatch Freaky Friday.
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The Reading Lounge
- Thread starter dangerousdon
- Start date
beginish
The Dr. Who of the TSC
So Schrod's Ball was sort of the same "fun read" for you as the first 3rd of the SillyMarrillion was for me?
Gormenghast ... I think I've heard that name before.Looking forward to your take on it.
At least ‘Ball’ was only 200 pages.
I’m lining up the Silmarillion for later this summer to be followed by the 3 deep dive books Chris Tolkien did before his death into the 3 main stories of the First Age (The Children of Hurin; Beren and Luthien; The Fall of Gondolin).
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
This is one of the easier books to read on investing as there is not a great deal of focus on numbers, numbers, and compounded numbers. The first chunk on the book deals with looking at market bubbles over the past few hundred years up to dot.coms and even the housing crisis. Then, a review of modern investment theories including smart-beta and such, finally followed by the last bit of the book which basically says something along the lines of "Since these approaches have not beaten the market over the long term, just buy the market (aka. indices)"We interrupt the deep dive into dreary dysfunctional dystopia to bring you.....
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In investing speak, my return to this type of book would be called an expected "reversion to the mean."
All in all, VERDICT: RECOMMEND
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I am gonna check my couch cushions and winter coat pockets for disposable income and get back to you.
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
@August West , My investment advice is easily worth double what you've paid so far. 
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
WORRY-FREE MONEY (not to be confused with WORRY, FREE MONEY ) is a light read about how to manage your finances, using the following approach (which I am oversimplifying):
- pay yourself first
- pay your fixed MUST PAY expenses next
- Establish and emergency fund
- Save some towards retirement
- Get rid of your debt
- Spend anything and everything left over
I view it as a Dave Ramses "Light" approach.
) is a light read about how to manage your finances, using the following approach (which I am oversimplifying):- pay yourself first
- pay your fixed MUST PAY expenses next
- Establish and emergency fund
- Save some towards retirement
- Get rid of your debt
- Spend anything and everything left over
I view it as a Dave Ramses "Light" approach.
Have you read any C.S. Lewis?
Yes most of his works
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
Finished reading this The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less about a half hour ago. It's NOT an investment book (OMG!!! 
) but a study of psychology on how more choice not only makes choosing more difficult but also how it tends to makes us less happy with our choice.
VERDICT: RECOMMEND
) but a study of psychology on how more choice not only makes choosing more difficult but also how it tends to makes us less happy with our choice.VERDICT: RECOMMEND
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
The Value of Simple is a short and easy to read book took only 3 post-morning-coffee sessions of reading to devour. It is an EXCELLENT starter guide on passive investing that is geared towards the Canadian investor and, unlike many "introductory/beginner" books, this one doesn't have 475 tables of technical information about compounding returns, historical market rolling averages, etc....
Plain and simply, it's an excellent introduction.
VERDICT: HIGHLY RECOMMEND
Plain and simply, it's an excellent introduction.
VERDICT: HIGHLY RECOMMEND
global_dev
Shave Enthusiast
I’m about to start reading Atomic Habits. Anyone already read it?
Are the classics dead?
NickCard
Sr. Shave Member
That would be a shame as they are classics for good reason. If you were to see a HS English reading list today, however, you may very well have an argument that the classics are “dead” or dying a slow death.
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
BOOM!! Beat the Bank is the 2018 book we all needed to read 30 years ago! My current self didn't learn anything new, but this does a great job explaining how Bay Street (Canada's Wall St) brokers do an excellent job of siphoning off an investor's gains via fees.
VERDICT: EXCELLENT!!! (Even for Americans!)
VERDICT: EXCELLENT!!! (Even for Americans!)
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
How to Retire Happy is not a book on how to either:
a) prepare for retirement financially, nor
b) how to structure your finances (savings and expenses) while in retirement.
Rather, it is a book that lightly discusses various aspects of retirement (friends, where to live, early/late SSA, medicare/medicaid....).
Geared to the American market, I sped read / scanned about 1/2 the book as the topics such as US taxation do not easily transfer to Canadian life. I found very little of value. Indeed, simply Googling topics about retirement preparation will probably give you better information.
VERDICT: PASS (maybe okay to read if you are an American and have not done any thinking about it yet)
a) prepare for retirement financially, nor
b) how to structure your finances (savings and expenses) while in retirement.
Rather, it is a book that lightly discusses various aspects of retirement (friends, where to live, early/late SSA, medicare/medicaid....).
Geared to the American market, I sped read / scanned about 1/2 the book as the topics such as US taxation do not easily transfer to Canadian life. I found very little of value. Indeed, simply Googling topics about retirement preparation will probably give you better information.
VERDICT: PASS (maybe okay to read if you are an American and have not done any thinking about it yet)
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
Another book down and, yes, @NurseDave , you guessed it .... another investment book!
Sleep-Easy Investing is geared towards the Canadian audience with little understanding of how markets work and the difference between a stock and a bond. It is from 2008 ,,, and it shows. It does a very nice job about explaining stocks, bonds, GICs, T-Bills, Mutual Funds, and Money Market accounts. However, it does a horrible job introducing you to ETFs. As far as I can tell, he thinks ETFs ONLY track market Indeces and are all passive. This is true for "couch potato" appropriate investors (like me!) but you can also find numerous ETFs that use hedging and derivatives to be as actively managed and un-indexlike as any mutual fund or selection of hand-picked stocks.
VERDICT: A dual-verdict!
RECOMMENDED for general introduction to the various holdings (NOTE: The book is grossly out-of-date when it comes to asset allocation recommendations)
HARD PASS for all the the ETF information (You also will NOT find any TFSA information as that came about after the book was published)
Sleep-Easy Investing is geared towards the Canadian audience with little understanding of how markets work and the difference between a stock and a bond. It is from 2008 ,,, and it shows. It does a very nice job about explaining stocks, bonds, GICs, T-Bills, Mutual Funds, and Money Market accounts. However, it does a horrible job introducing you to ETFs. As far as I can tell, he thinks ETFs ONLY track market Indeces and are all passive. This is true for "couch potato" appropriate investors (like me!) but you can also find numerous ETFs that use hedging and derivatives to be as actively managed and un-indexlike as any mutual fund or selection of hand-picked stocks.
VERDICT: A dual-verdict!
RECOMMENDED for general introduction to the various holdings (NOTE: The book is grossly out-of-date when it comes to asset allocation recommendations)
HARD PASS for all the the ETF information (You also will NOT find any TFSA information as that came about after the book was published)
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
Another older book from Gordon Pape, who also wrote the one above ^^^^
Retirement's Harsh New Realities is from 2012 and more from the same songbook as well. He basically runs around complaining about broken pension systems (except if you are a federal employee), DB plans going bankrupt, self-administered DC plans being in the hands of employees who are unedumacated about investing, government benefit clawbacks and taxes on your savings when you go to use them, etc.....
Nothing new learned here. and even 4 years later the previous book, he still seems to misunderstand what an ETF is.
VERDICT: PASS
Up next.... no books , but digging into some research on vacationing in August down in Nova Scotia. Will look at Cape Breton rather than the Southern Shore for this trip, even though just outside of Halifax will be our base (niece's house).
Retirement's Harsh New Realities is from 2012 and more from the same songbook as well. He basically runs around complaining about broken pension systems (except if you are a federal employee), DB plans going bankrupt, self-administered DC plans being in the hands of employees who are unedumacated about investing, government benefit clawbacks and taxes on your savings when you go to use them, etc.....
Nothing new learned here. and even 4 years later the previous book, he still seems to misunderstand what an ETF is.
VERDICT: PASS
Up next.... no books
, but digging into some research on vacationing in August down in Nova Scotia. Will look at Cape Breton rather than the Southern Shore for this trip, even though just outside of Halifax will be our base (niece's house).