In order to feed your brain, you actually have to feed it. You do that by reading, not listening. It’s true that we learn by listening and writing also, but reading is the most fundamental and economically viable way to learn for most of us.
Most all of the major traders/wizards that I have met are voracious readers: they read everything. Two of them that I know very well and whose houses I’ve been to don’t have bookshelves…they have book-ROOMS…with titles on commodities that go back to the beginning of the century. Heaven!!!
Here are my favorite books from 2009.
According to The Economist, e-books and e-publishing are the future. Maybe this is slightly hyped b/c of the iPad launch, but consider this: with RSS readers and ebooks, online magazines, and online newspapers you technically don’t need to buy any paper-based reading material anymore…unless you like the feeling of holding a book.
I like books, but I love my RSS Readers and Kindle too. They allow me to consume an enormous amount of material in much shorter periods of time than if I had to hold the written material on paper. I read as much as any CIA analyst.
So each day, I read from my RSS Reader, my Kindle, books, and Twitter search results. And when I’m done with all of that, I’m looking through Gutenberg Project for free things to read that I can upload to my Kindle. One gem I’ll give you for free that I uploaded to the Kindle was Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White. A very timely read indeed.
From The Economist:
“Like many other parts of the media industry, publishing is being radically reshaped by the growth of the internet. Online retailers are already among the biggest distributors of books. Now e-books threaten to undermine sales of the old-fashioned kind. In response, publishers are trying to shore up their conventional business while preparing for a future in which e-books will represent a much bigger chunk of sales.”
The amount of sales now is tiny of overall book sales – 6%. But once the word gets out about how much you can get for free on the internet AND once Google gets involved, you’ll see competition for better devices and lower costs for books (unless they collude).