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Books 2013
Only one nonfiction book in this very random collection, but it tops the list in its insight and importance. From the best to the least best: Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future? George Saunders, Tenth of December Teju Cole, Open City Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge AM Homes, May We Be Forgiven Leavitt, Two Hotel Francforts…
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Big themes at Morningstar Investment Conference 2012
Several themes emerged at last week’s Morningstar Investment Conference: Don’t panic 1: “It’s hard to imagine the Eurozone coming apart” (Michael Hasenstab, Franklin Templeton) Don’t panic 2: “For China to experience a hard landing would require two unlikely near-term events… a massive overtightening error, and a banking crisis” (Michael Hasenstab, Franklin Templeton) The best growth…
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Books about popular music
For whatever reason in the past couple of years I’ve been doing a lot of reading about popular music. Here are a few report cards, in ascending order: This must be the place: the adventures of Talking Heads in the 20th century : David Bowman C– I’ll sleep when I’m dead: the dirty life and…
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Hitch-22 : Christopher Hitchens
Further proof that erudition does not equal intelligence. Despite a moving account of his youth, the book devolves into an extended rationalization of Hitchens’s approval of the Iraq invasion by his adopted country, the United States. That and the book’s meaningless, arbitrary title undermine its narrative and its pretension to intellectual rigor, by unfairly borrowing…
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Neologisms
The “Keeping Our Word” campaign from Eagle Asset Management, now offline, looked suspiciously (and coincidentally, I’m sure) like my “Neologisms” ads for Deloitte & Touche of nine years ago. I have to admit I’m a sucker for invented words, so I admire Eagle’s approach which consists of these new coinages: perfonomy — the addition of…
Got any book recommendations?