What books do you read and recommend?
I get this question a lot from readers, and I never really know how to answer it because I feel like the question comes from the expectation that public-facing personalities like me will almost compulsively flex a list of generally accepted investing books as required reading for followers as if reading those books is somehow required to see through the matrix and start sniping market tops and bottoms like a pro. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I don’t read investing books. I’m old, so I’ve obviously read some investing books over the course of my life, but I honestly don’t read a huge volume of investing books and curate an up-to-date ranked list of my favorites. I’ve read Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad enough to know that I didn’t want to read any more books from Kiyosaki, and I read Bo Sanchez’s My Maid Invests in the Stock Market enough to know that those books weren’t going to be of any help to me either. I liked Think and Trade Like a Champion by Mark Minervini, but we don’t share trading styles so I read snippets of that book from time to time when I sense that I need to do a mindset “reset” and scrub some emotion from my trades. I don’t get a lot of time to read but I truly love it, and when I do get a chance I almost always reach for some great fiction to help keep me creative. I’m a huge fan of the Dune series of books (I read the first book about once per year; the Duke’s dinner scene is so good), and I’m a sucker for good short reads that are vaguely sci-fi (Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang is wild). One of my first favorite books was Slaughterhouse-Five. One of my all-time favorites is House of Leaves (re-reading that is so awesome), and while I love the thought of reading The Brothers Karamazov, I’ve started reading it three or four times and never made it more than halfway. I’m always cruising Reddit and Twitter for new book recommendations, so if you have any, I’m all eyes and ears!
