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BOOKS - What are ASF members reading?

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For great entertainment, any of Lee Child's novels, with the protagonist "Reacher". Tight dialogue, no wasted words and brilliant characterisation.

Two other books which will remain with me for a long time:

"Candy" by Luke Davies, semi autobiographical account of the ravages of heroin addiction.

"A Married Man" by Edmund White, fiction ostensibly but clearly a first hand account of the reality of life as a homosexual, graphic and touching.
 
Surely I'm not the only person here who's reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

For the 2nd time.

What an unrepresentative mob we must be.

Ghoti
 
The Unteleported Man - Phillip K. Dick
conceptually brilliant!!! - as good as

Do Andrioids Dream of Electric Sheep?
 
Currently reading 'Temple' by Matthew Reilly, read most if not all of his other stuff.

Link to Amazon.

Also recently finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, not sure what to read next:

Trading for a Living - Alexander Elder
or
The Enemy - Lee Child
or one of the other 54 physical books I have still to be read or the 3,000 electronic books still to be read.
 
brettc4 said:
Currently reading 'Temple' by Matthew Reilly, read most if not all of his other stuff.

Link to Amazon.

Also recently finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, not sure what to read next:

Trading for a Living - Alexander Elder
or
The Enemy - Lee Child
or one of the other 54 physical books I have still to be read or the 3,000 electronic books still to be read.
Click to expand...

I'd go for Lee Child any time!
 
I have just finished reading "Trading for a Living" by Dr Alexander Elder.

This book is very good and highly recommended for those of you who haven't read it, it explains a number of things from a crows perspective. The book has information about indicators, chart patterns, even a couple of trading systems, but it are the insights into crowd psycology and the information about money management and you own psycology which really stood out and helped me realise just how much further I need to go to be a good trader.

Anyway, here are some of the tidbits I liked the most out of the book.

Brett


Think and plan your trades, do not trade impulsively.

Remove emotion from the trade.
"inability to manage themselves leads to poor money management"

Practice defensive Money Management, watch capital carefully.

3 Pillars of successful trading:
a. psychology
b. market analysis and trading systems
c. money management

Winners receive less than what losers lose because of commissions and slippage.

Slippage is the difference between the actual price and the price that existed as you placed your order. Technically if placed online this time difference is less so in a liquid market therefore smaller slippage, in an illiquid market, this could be substantial.

"Look for a broker with the cheapest commissions and watch him like a hawk. Design a trading system that gives signals relatively infrequently and allows you to enter markets during quiet times."

"Markets offer unlimited opportunities for self-sabotage, as well as for self-fulfillment."

"A successful trader is a realist. He knows his abilities and limitations"

"Give yourself several years to learn how to trade. Do not start with an account bigger than $20,000 and do not lose more than 2 percent of your equity on any single trade. Learn from cheap mistakes in a small account"

"If you feel that you are trading too much and the results are poor, stop trading for a month."

Take responsibility for your own trades. To assist in this, keep a trading diary (journal) with the reasons for entering and exiting a trade. Look for patterns in your reasoning for both success and failure.
Your Trading Diary should include the following:
a. Date and Price of every entry and exit
b. slippage
c. commission
d. stop price
e. all adjustments of stops
f. reason for entering
g. reason for where the stop is placed
h. reasons for exiting
i. target price
j. maximum paper profit
k. maximum paper loss - especially after a stop was hit
l. anything else relevant

Good Money Management is the Traders Safety Net.

"A trader must take a business risk, but may never take a loss greater than his predetermined risk." If he does he is a gambler and not a successful trader.

Do not accept experts at their word, ask questions, take time to learn for yourself.

Do not get greedy, their will always be buying opportunities in the future.

First Goal - long-term survival
Second Goal - steady growth of capital
Third Goal - making high profits

"Each trading session is a battle between bulls, who make money when prices rise, and bears, who profit when prices fall. The goal of technical analysts is to discover the balance of power between bulls and bears and bet on the winning group. If bulls are much stronger, you should buy and hold. If bears are much stronger , you should sell and sell short. If both camps are about equal in strength, a wise trader stands aside."

"The crowd may be stupid, but it is stronger than you"

"You do not have to run with the crowd - but you should never run against it."

"The weakest part of any trading system is the trader himself. Traders fail when they trade without a plan or deviate from their plans."

"Prices seldom rally very hard after a bad decline."

The Opening Price usually reflects the amateurs opinion of value, the closing price tends to reflect the actions of professional traders.
If prices closed higher than they opened, then market professionals were probably more bullish than amateurs and vice versa on the bearish side.

If prices close near the low of the day, it shows the bears have won the day, the opposite if true for the bulls.

The distance between the high and the low reveals the intensity of conflict between bulls and bears.

"The strength of every support and resistance zone depends on three factors: its length, its height and the volume of trading that has taken place in it."

"When the trend you are riding approaches support or resistance, tighten your protective stop."

"True breakouts are confirmed by heavy volume, while false breakouts tend to have light volume."

Daily trading ranges are relatively narrow in a healthy trend.

"A significant high or low on a daily chart is the highest high or the lowest low for at least a week."

"When you are in doubt about a trend, step back and examine the charts in a timeframe that is greater than the one you are trying to trade."

"The trouble with indicators is that they often contradict one another. Some of them work best in trending markets, others in flat markets. Some are good at catching turning points, while others are better at following trends."

3 Types of indicator:
1. Trend-following - work best when markets are moving but give bad and dangerous signals when markets are flat,
2. Oscillators - catch turning points in flat markets but give premature and dangerous signals when the markets trend.
3. Miscellaneous - provide insight into mass psychology

Markets are always changing and a system that worked in the past is no guarantee to work in the future.

Oscillator indicators give their best trading signals when they diverge from prices.

Price jumps on more than double the average volume is a sign of a potential blow-off move.

"As a rule of thumb, if today's volume is higher than yesterday's volume, then today's trend is likely to continue."

"You need to concentrate on trading right and not on the money"

If you suffer a string on consecutive loses, ie 3 or 4 in a row, do not trade for the rest of the month. Use the period to examine the trades and see if you traded correctly, if you traded correctly, was it a change in the markets which caught you out.
 
I can fully recommend The Devils Double by Latif Yahia, great stuff (if you prefer non fiction as I do):

In 1987, Latif Yahia was taken to Saddam’s headquarters to meet Uday, Saddam’s eldest son, and told that a great honour had been bestowed upon him: that because of the great likeness between them, he had been chosen to be Uday’s double. For many Iraqis it would have been the highlight of their lives, but for Latif, a peace-loving man who did not agree with Saddam’s brutal regime, it was not. He refused. Following a week of torture, and realising he would be killed if he continued to refuse, Latif was forced to accept the role. After a gruesome training programme during which he was made to watch over thirty films of torture, hours of tapes of Uday, and undertake a final remodelling of his appearance, Latif was deemed ready. But it was only after the final test, a meeting with Saddam himself, that Latif made his first public appearance. And so began his life as Uday’s double – a life on the perimeter of the inner circle of Saddam’s eldest son, a witness to the horror of his insane life of debauchery, excess and brutality, and an experience for which he almost paid with his life on more than one occasion.
 
Just finished re-reading Animal Farm, George Orwell

Gives you an insight into what realy is going on with human behaviour.
 
"The Sushi Economy - Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy"
Author: Sasha Issenberg
Publisher: Gotham Books (Penguin Group, USA), 2007

The book is a riveting and witty inquiry into the raw fish explosion. A must read.

One chapter is dedicated dedicated to tuna ranching in Australia. The next annual Tunarama Festival*, of Port Lincoln (South Australia), will take place January 26-28, 2008. Among the competitions taking place during the event there is the popular John West Tuna Toss. The charge to competitors is simple: propel a tuna toward gently lapping waves. The winner gets one thousand dollars.


* www.tunarama.net
 
This one is sounds interesting.

SUGARBABE
by Holly Hill

How far would you go? Based on a true story.

Description of book
"Attractive, professional, well-spoken, well-dressed 35-year-old woman seeks sugar daddy. I live in Darlinghurst on a 17th floor unit with fantastic skyline views to the harbour. The unit also features very discreet and secure undercover guest parking. I am looking for exclusivity so will (theoretically) be available to you 24 x 7. I am single and don't have any children. I am also a fabulous cook and can provide gourmet meals should you require them. I am a qualified psychologist so I make an excellent listener, and I have a great love of conversation. I have also worked for many years in public relations so am a clever, charming companion in just about any situation. I love sex. I will require a generous weekly allowance in return for all of the above".

Holly Hill (pseudonym) gave up her job at the behest of her wealthy boyfriend - and then found herself dumped and penniless. After spending six weeks in bed pining for her lost love, she was encouraged by a friend to be 'open-minded' about her career choices - and ended up placing an online ad for a sugar daddy. She received an almost overwhelming response from all sorts of men, but most of them were married men whose wives had lost interest in sex.

As Holly interviewed the men and settled on a candidate, she decided to record what happened next. Those almost-daily observations became a journal documenting Holly's extraordinary experiences - not just the men she meets, but the things she finds out about marriages, in particular, and what men need from them.

SUGARBABE is her real-life account of the emails, meetings, employment of and interactions with the applicants for the role, and the five men she eventually chooses (not all at the same time!). It is by turns funny, enlightening, challenging and thought-provoking.

There has never been a book like SUGARBABE before, because no one like Holly has ever set out to document this kind of fascinating social experiment. SUGARBABE gives all of us who might have wondered what it would be like to involved in a situation like this the opportunity to be the ultimate voyeur. Holly's acute observations give us entr‚e to an almost-secret world of men who love their wives but need more, and the women like Holly who have no intention of destroying marriages but, instead, want to help provide what's lacking in the marriage so they actually don't need to break up.



Reviews

*"Chatty and cheeky...Sugarbabe is Pride and Prejudice for the dotcom generation" - The Sun Herald

"Sugarbabe is definitely an entertaining read, with sex scenes that stand out as fine examples of humour and candor." - SX News

".what she discovers about men and love is thought provoking, to say the least." - Famous Magazine

"Enlightening view into the male psyche... what you always wanted to know about what men really think" - Femail.com


http://www.randomhouse.com.au/Books/...=9781741667998


Apparently Holy is now working on a book called Toy Boys.
 
“Think and Grow Rich” 1937 by Napoleon Hill never leaves my bedside table.
Conscious awareness in:
Desire
Faith
Organised Planning
Decision
Persistence
The Six Ghosts of FEAR
 
moneymajix said:
This one is sounds interesting.

SUGARBABE
by Holly Hill

How far would you go? Based on a true story.

Description of book
"Attractive, professional, well-spoken, well-dressed 35-year-old woman seeks sugar daddy.

*"Chatty and cheeky...Sugarbabe is Pride and Prejudice for the dotcom generation" - The Sun Herald

"Sugarbabe is definitely an entertaining read, with sex scenes that stand out as fine examples of humour and candor." - SX News

".what she discovers about men and love is thought provoking, to say the least." - Famous Magazine

"Enlightening view into the male psyche... what you always wanted to know about what men really think" - Femail.com[/url]
Click to expand...
what a classic lol - sounds like a mixture of Enough Rope and Lady Chatterley's Lover lol - good one money majix
 
at the moment im trying to read the minds of investors in the US.... no joy.

can v highly recommend 'pillars of the earth' -ken follett.

'the peloponnesian war'. -thucydides.

a fortunate life. -a b facey
 
Affluenza: How to Be Successful and Stay Sane
by Oliver James

400pp, Vermillion

In his 1997 book Britain on the Couch, Oliver James asserted that "advanced capitalism makes money out of misery and dissatisfaction, as if it were encouraging us to fill up the psychic void with material goods". In this book, he explores the idea further, and it's terrific. A lot of readers, wanting to put their finger on why the affluent world they live in makes them so uneasy, will want to cheer. Here he is saying, loud and clear, that capitalism is bad for your mental health. And then he tells us why this is the case, and what we can do about it.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/healthmindandbody/0,,1999598,00.html



ABC Interview with the author

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/inconversation/stories/2007/1870422.htm[/B]
 
Two funny books:
Milagro Beanfield War...forget the author but the description of an old mexican man 20 pages in is a classic....forget the Robert Redford movie of the book..he butchered it.
Choir Boys...actually laughed out loud.
The God Delusion was interesting as was The Bible Fraud.
Like Lee Childs...Reacher...the ends justify the means.
 
I have just finished reading "The 5th Horseman" by James Paterson and Maxine Paetro.

Another good book in the Lindsey Boxer series.

I only have one question, with the number of books James Paterson's name is on with all different authors, exactly how much of it is he writting?? Irrespective, an easy read but it helps to have read the preceeding books in the series.
Personal preference is that the Alex Cross series is a little better, I guess I just like the characters better.

I have also recently read "Hidden Empire" by Kevin J Anderson, part of the Seven Suns saga. If you like Space Opera this one gets better the further through you are until you reach then end and want to grab the second in the series to dfind our what happens next.

Brett
 
Mario Vargas Llosa on why reading is an essential part of being a citizen

In an interview conducted by Fietta Jarque, the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who was awarded an honorary degree on Wednesday, September 5th, by the La Rioja University in Spain, considers that reading is an essential part of learning to be a citizen. "Human freedom is a product of the imagination and inflamed desires engendered by reading. We are much freer when we read. This is why reading is indispensable in forming a democratic society, with active citizens who participate and intervene not only in public debate, but also in the march of civilisation. This is why reading is not a mere pleasure or distraction, but a basic instrument in the training of a free, modern and active citizen." (El Pais(daily) - Spain - 06/09/2007)
 
"Flower Confidential"
By Amy Stewart
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007

[An around-the-world, behind-the-scenes look at the flower industry and how it has sought--for better and worse--to achieve perfection. One chapter of the book is dedicated to Florigene*, an Australian company that is racing toward the goal of developing a blue rose.]

* www.florigene.com
 

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