It's an over-the-top absurdist novel about a Black urban farmer in L.A. who brings back slavery and segregation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sellout_(novel)

Thanks a lot, I will check them out

oh sweet ty

lol, I was curious, so now I'm on the waiting list for Don Ozzi's punk rock book.

lol same I'm on WL for both sellout books

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis.

It's the story of his time in the mid-to-late eighties at Salomon Brothers. Pretty interesting. He doesn't get too deep into the weeds explaining the markets. Not a technical review of how SB went wrong, just his story and experiences. Includes the time of the 1987 crash, which was pretty good.

It’s a great reread. Amazing that Michael Lewis wasn’t one and done but has built a pretty impressive career with compelling stories across a number of different industries.

Yeah, I agree. Really enjoyed The Big Short as well. Haven't read Moneyball, plan to get to that at some point. Watched the movies of both, they were fun too.

I found Moneyball compelling. I also recommend The Undoing Project, Lewis's book about Kahneman and Tversky. Though you might want to read Thinking, Fast and Slow first--if by some oversight you haven't already done so.

Thank, Russell, I'll keep an eye out for them.

Mr. Brown can Moo! Can You? Dr. Seuss’s Book of Wonderful Noises.

A scintillating read from cover to cover; never a dull moment. Simple and elegant plot structure that delivers on all cylinders. The grand drawings add to the luscious luster of this stimulating read.

Does it have pictures?

Delicious and delightful ones on every page!

I'm in!

Dr. Seuss is subversive. Burn after reading.

Finished jade Legacy by Fonda Lee. Third, and final installment in the Green Bine Trilogy. Outstanding series of books. I will miss the world and its characters.

The Best American Travel Writing (2018 version), edited by Cerhyl Strayed. This is (or maybe was) an annual compilation of travel stories, edited by a different person each year. I've read a few others in the series. This version didn't really resonate with me. Seems like the stories were less about travel, and more about telling some story, where travel to a place is incidental.

I did discover that Strayed and I grew up not too far apart in distance or time, so there's that.

The Big Heist by Anthony M. DiStefano. Only a couple chapters in. Saw two typos in the first twelve pages, so it doesn't bode well. Another retelling of the Lufthansa heist, popularized in Goodfellas. We'll see, it's early and a great story, but not sure what new will come out.

It's one of the alltime great memoirs by a 20-something male. Perfectly captures the spirit of the times.
Quitting his bond sales job at Salomon to write it, and then divorce his wife who kept working there to support him -- in order to marry 90s Tabitha Soren was one of the alltime great trades.

Moneyball is also excellent.

Big Short was disappointing for both his factual errors resulting from his ignorance of how ABS-structuring works* [inside baseball, I know], and his decades-long crusade to blame GS for everything.


*Saying you can't make a AAA-rated security out of subprime cash flows backed by hard assets is prima facie false. But whatevs, written for the common folk.

Now I need to know what GS means. I know it can't be Golden State cause that would be inside basketball.

As I've said before, Michael Lewis is up there with Tom Wolfe and David Halberstam as 1st ballot HoF non-fiction popularizers. Maybe just those 3 for me, although Tracy Kidder is good too.

Goldman Sachs. It's where Lewis was working and left to write Liar's Poker.

Wait, wasn't Liar's Poker Salomon Brothers? But I see now GS is indeed Goldman Sachs, lol me.

You are right, kiosk. Not sure how I figured out GS and got it confused that way.

I thought one point of the book was that an AAA rating was meaningless. Anyway, I vote Goldman Sachs but have nothing against Golden State.

Agree that he didn’t have the facts 100% correct, but it was probably 95%, and for his audience I thought that the big short was close enough. And the movie is ****ing fantastic.

I lived in Charlotte when the movie came out, and the line about “not even Wachovia will talk to us” was met with uproarious laughter from half the audience and stone-faced silence by the other half. Classic.

Just read Under the Banner of Heaven - interesting history of Mormonism including FLDS, through the lens of a pair of 1984 murders.