BOOKS - What are ASF members reading?

[Tisme]

Roald Dahl's Book of funny verses?

No think of 1. Lawson. 2. Patterson .3? and no not Tim Winton. Think Sentimental...

I'm guessing the three above no longer figure in the education of young australians in the ways of old australia...... too offensive to sensitive multicultural ears.

 

[luutzu]

No think of 1. Lawson. 2. Patterson .3? and no not Tim Winton. Think Sentimental...

I'm guessing the three above no longer figure in the education of young australians in the ways of old australia...... too offensive to sensitive multicultural ears.

They probably still teach those oldies in advanced English classes.

I was in General English so yah Just the dumped down Romeo & Juliet, My Place, and other less colonial good old days stuff.


Am reading about another Aussie empire builder: Murdoch's adventure in China - how he lost billions and won a wife.

Quite corrupt that Murdoch. I think one major reason he divorced his previous wife and take on the Chinese one was to show the comrades how much he like China.

 

[Junior]

About to get stuck into this one, from one of the best stand-up comics. I expect it will be pretty dark stuff.

 

[sr20de]

beyond a pile of text books,

Tragedy & Hope
A History Of The World In Our Time

by

Carroll Quigley

 

[basilio]

Found a copy of Germaine Greer "Daddy I hardly knew you"

Just fascinating. Germaine investigates the life of her father and family back in the 1900's and through WW2 and post war. We may try to idealise the past but this book pulls no punches on the tough, difficult times people faced and the reality that many, many people suffered dreadfully as a result.

Germaine is an excellent writer. Well worth finding in an op shop.

 

[So_Cynical]

Old Man's War, one of the top rated Syfy books of all time.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51964.Old_Man_s_War

 

[tinhat]

I'm reading "The Biggest Estate on Earth, How Aborigines Made Australia", Gammage and just received delivery of "The Better Angels of Our Nature : A History of Violence and Humanity", Pinker. Someone gave me "Enemy at the Gates: The Battle for Stalingrad", Craig, which I started and then put down and I'm not sure where-abouts I put it but I would like to finish reading it.

 

[smallwolf]

Latest is "Falling Leaves" by Adeline Yen Mah
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54529.Falling_Leaves

and before that Wild Swans by Jung Chang
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1848.Wild_Swans?from_search=true

in different ways both are depressing books, but ones that you cannot put down. And the events in each book happened in the 20th Century.

 

[drillinto]

Bruce Moore, editor
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL DICTIONARY
Australian words and their origins
Two volumes, 1,600pp.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/australian-slang-humphries/

 

[basilio]

Not quite a book but I came across a 94 year old writer with a great range of comments on his experiences in England from the mid 30's. He also has a couple of books to his name.


Harry Leslie Smith is a survivor of the Great Depression, a second world war RAF veteran and an activist for the poor and for the preservation of social democracy. He has written several books about Britain during the depression, the war, and postwar austerity. Join him on Twitter @Harryslaststand. He is the author of Love Among the Ruins

August 2017

In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming. Now its thundering approach can’t be ignored
Author Harry Leslie Smith remembers the prelude to the second world war – and there are worrying echoes now
Published: 14 Aug 2017 2,714

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/harry-leslie-smith

 

[Cam019]

Currently one third of the way through 'The Big Short' by Michael Lewis. Great read thus far. Highly recommended.

The following four books are en route to my apartment; 'Reminiscences of a Stock Operator' by Edwin Lefèvre, 'The Art of Learning' by John Waitzkin, 'Market Wizards' by Jack Schwager and 'How to Make Money in Stocks' by William O'Neil.

 

[basilio]

The Big Short was turned into a movie/doco that was also outstanding. Compelling explanation of the concepts.

 

[bellenuit]

The Big Short was turned into a movie/doco that was also outstanding. Compelling explanation of the concepts.

If you like those sort of movies, Rogue Trader - The Story of Nick Leeson is on YouTube at no charge:



Not a great movie, but explains what happened fairly well.

 

[Cam019]

The Big Short was turned into a movie/doco that was also outstanding. Compelling explanation of the concepts.

I enjoyed the movie. I am enjoying the book even more though. Over halfway through now and it is only getting better as I get further into it.

 

[So_Cynical]

The Big Short was turned into a movie/doco that was also outstanding. Compelling explanation of the concepts.

The Movie was shite compared to the book, movie was very dumbed down to make palatable to a mass audience...the other Michael Lewis books around the finance world are also very good.

 

[basilio]

The Movie was shite compared to the book, movie was very dumbed down to make palatable to a mass audience...the other Michael Lewis books around the finance world are also very good.

Maybe the movie wasn't as detailed as the book. But getting across the main points of how the flaws in the housing boom were recognised and taken advantage of was , in my mind, done exceptionally well.
Generally a simple (but accurate) , clear exposition is better value than attempting to go into depths that will lose and confuse most of the audience.

The Big Short Somehow Makes Subprime Mortgages Entertaining

Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, one of the economics whizzes who bet against the US housing market in The Big Short. Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures
Nothing about The Big Short should add up. It’s a movie about the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, by the guy who made Anchorman. Yet, it works—and even more weirdly, you walk out understanding the fineries of the situation that kicked off the great recession.

That’s because director Adam McKay, who adapted his movie from Michael Lewis’s book of same name, realized that the economic meltdown happened because people thought they couldn’t understand something they easily could have grokked. “Economics is actually fascinating, it’s the language of power—but somehow we’ve been conditioned to treat it like it’s boring,” McKay says. “I figure if I’m getting into it, and I’m the guy who did Step Brothers, what’s going on here?”

Of course, to understand how a bunch of Wall Street whizzes—Michael Burry (Christian Bale), Mark Baum (Steve Carell), Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), and their cohorts—found a way to bet against the American economy, you still have to understand how that economy functions (or doesn’t). To do that, McKay broke a lot of rules, like letting actors address the camera directly—and trusting people to understand things that are explained to them, the way adults are supposed to be able to. “He treats his audience as intelligent,” says Lewis. “Nobody ever goes out and treats their audience as idiots, but when they do it they do it implicitly by refusing to grapple with complicated truths.”

McKay also wrapped those truths in easy-to-swallow packages through interludes presented by folks like Selena Gomez and Anthony Bourdain. The point is to take the things that were distracting us while the financial world was collapsing and use them to tell us what was actually going on. “The premise was that we were going to take this 24-hour pop-culture machine that tells us what Kim Kardashian is up to, and then say, ‘What if that machine told us real information?'” McKay says.

With the movie hitting theaters this Friday, here’s a peek into The Big Short’s best educational moments.
https://www.wired.com/2015/12/big-short-understanding-economics/

 

[brty]

One of the most important aspects of "The Big Short" is often overlooked. All the main characters had correctly predicted what was going to happen, but started to lose money (and the confidence of their investors).

They became frustrated at how the market for bonds just could not keep going up, yet it did. The biggest lesson is that just because you can predict a market is irrational, does not mean that market will reverse that irrationality immediately.

It is like cryptocurrencies/bitcoin at present. It is going to end badly, but shorting it now could be an expensive exercise.

 

[Cam019]

One of the most important aspects of "The Big Short" is often overlooked. All the main characters had correctly predicted what was going to happen, but started to lose money (and the confidence of their investors).

They became frustrated at how the market for bonds just could not keep going up, yet it did. The biggest lesson is that just because you can predict a market is irrational, does not mean that market will reverse that irrationality immediately.

It is like cryptocurrencies/bitcoin at present. It is going to end badly, but shorting it now could be an expensive exercise.

Too right @brty, although, I do think the CDS trade against sub-prime mortgage bonds is quite a different beast to say... shorting bitcoin. Obviously, no one can predict the exact point in time when market disaster will strike but regarding the CDS trade, Dr Mike Burry was able to analyse the underlying pools of mortgages in each bond and was able to deduce that the fixed teaser rates would expire, and default rates would skyrocket, in mid-to-late 2007. The CDS trade also allowed for asymmetrical risk and return.

Now of course, gurus of technical analysis and VSA might be able to watch the price action and volume of bitcoin and time their entry into shorting bitcoin or bitcoin futures, but it still does not offer the same asymmetrical risk and reward that the CDS trade offered, as an upward price spike could instantly trigger stop losses and close out a traders position quickly. The only way I think that it could be accomplished with bitcoin would be to buy long term put options. Options would allow for price fluctuations without being stopped out prematurely. Interesting to think about.

 

[Zero Sum Game]

Conn Igulden's Conqueror series.
5 books, historical fiction following the life of Genghis Khan.
Halfway through the third book...
A must read!

 

[Cam019]

Downloaded 'Why Stocks Go Up and Down' by William Pike and Patrick Gregory. Found it on a Dr. Mike Burry recommended reading list. Not only did this book have great reviews but the front cover caught my eye... 'The book you need to understand other investent books', perfect! So if you were like me and dropped your accounting major at uni because the way they taught it was the most boring thing alive, or you just want a better understanding of fundamental analysis, this could be for you.