There was a moment when it seemed like everyone in finance was reading that book.

I love the part where he crashes the tent market gambling on camel derivatives.

Not here to tell people which books to like, and that's great it has affected your poker career in a positive way, but YUCK! If your looking for some inspirational fiction (or non fiction) you can do a lot better then this piece of crap imo.

I could not disagree more with this.

We could all go back to Jonathan Livingston Seagull ...

lol, JLS was literally required reading in my 9th grade English class. We had a young hip iconoclastic teacher.

Probably a perfect reading-level for that book. It's sweet and, in its way, clever ... But more pseudo-profound than deep. Every generation has its work of pop philosophy and mysticism: Gibran's The Prophet being, I guess, the spiritual forefather of The Alchemist.

At least these books are (much more) benign than Ayn Rand's fantasies of heroic selfishness.

Finished reading The Monk and the Philosopher by Jean Francois Revel and Matthieu Ricard. The authors are father and son. The father began life as a Roman Catholic and later became an atheist. The son was raised atheist and later became a Buddhist Monk. The two get together to discuss their views on theism, atheism and Buddhism.

Started reading An Open Heart by the Dalai Lama.

Been fairly busy. Audiobooks recently finished:

You Are Now Less Dumb - David McRaney -
Scientific Secrets for Raising Kids Who Thrive - The Great Courses - Professor Peter M. Vishton -
The Story of Human Language - The Great Courses - John McWhorter -

Currently listening to Dune by Frank Herbert.

At some point I also finished Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
First, its worth noting that it isn't finished yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliezer_Yudkowsky

It's being released serially and:

I actually really liked it. It was definitely an avenue for him to teach some of the "rationality" lessons of the author. That said, he did much better with characters and story than I would've expected. It was a little uneven, with some chapters being better than others. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned some things along the way.

I'm now working on:

Yudkowsky's The Sequences - an insanely long curated series of blog/forum posts. They start with an explanation of Bayes theory. The first "sequence" is called Mysterious answers to Mysterious questions. Its kind of similar content to You Are Now Less Dumb or Thinking Fast and Slow - how to think, how to avoid biases, etc. Its pretty good.

I'm also still working on Thinking Fast and Slow.
On the Audible side I have the next two Carlos Ruiz Zafon books tee'd up: The Angel's Game and The Prisoner of Heaven.

Started Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano. So far, it's as good as Missing Person.

Also, started We Are Called to Rise by Laura McBride. McBride is a professor at the College of Southern Nevada and scheduled to speak at the January meeting of the Las Vegas Writers Group on using setting as a character.

And, I near finishing The Guermantes Way by my favorite neurasthenic, Marcel Proust.

has anyone read the true crime classic Fatal Vision? about the army doc that killed his family and blamed it on the Manson Family?

I watched the Fatal Vision miniseries and the 60 Minutes story on him. The guy seemed like a stone cold liar to me.

My goto serial killer is Richard Leonard "The Iceman" Kuklinski.

Any recommendations for something similar to Murakami? Sci/fi or fantasy elements are cool as well.

For the second time I am trying to read the Sun Also Rises, but I can't get into it.

It was a rotten way to be wounded

Enigma - about the life and ideas of and contribution to mathematics, computation, logic, programming, and cryptology of Alan Turing - is simply phenomenal. it's written by a erudite mathematician with an ability to synthesize complex topics into something understandable to the lay person without over simplifying or being pedantic. it doesn't shy away from his homosexuality and how it shaped how he felt and was seen in "the looking glass world" of england in the first half of the 20th century. easily one of the best biographies i've ever read.


what they did to Turing contributed to one of the biggest individual setbacks in modern scientific progress. IMO. a genius iconoclast in computing --a 'field' that has created our modern society.

Borges?

That was what sprung to my mind. Or 100 years of solitude perhaps.

Finished The Guermantes Way (Vol. III of In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff (Translator), Terence Kilmartin (Translator), D.J. Enright (Revisions).

Started Sodom and Gomorrah (Vol. IV of In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust, C.K. Scott Moncrieff (Translator), Terence Kilmartin (Translator), D.J. Enright (Revisions).

Yes another great book. +1

Finished Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano. The writing style is similar to Missing Person. I liked Honeymoon, but I did not think it was as good as Missing Person. They share common elements of a certain hypnotic, dream-like quality, melancholy, and a sense of foreboding. Modiano writes page turners that are sort of mysteries, but not. A common thread is a lack of resolution or finality and a search for identity and understanding of what makes an identity. The resolution, or lack thereof, is a bit like L'eclisse, but you may be able to read the book in less time than it takes to see the movie and where the movie is about modernity and relationships, Modiano is about modernity and identity more like Musil in The Man Without Qualities but explored in a completely different way.

If you're thinking about reading some Modiano, I would not suggest Honeymoon as a starting point.

Finished Nexus

(stolen from amazon review)

Thought it was very interesting, and also finished the sequel Crux
and now waiting for part 3!

I quite enjoyed Teju Cole's Open City, possibly the most discussed American novel of 2012. Lovely prose about a Nigerian immigrant who likes solitary walks, chiefly through the post-9/11 NY city-scape. Cole is unusually willing (for a US-based fiction writer) to have characters who talk about ideas, politics, theories.

Virtually every reviewer begins by talking about the novel's Sebald-inspired prose style and/or its use of a flâneur-protagonist. Many also mention an unsettling development late in the book and there’s much argument as to how that works, whether it’s artful or not, etc.

Missing Person just came to my attention the other day. Sounds like something I would love. L'eclisse is a favorite.