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In this little book, Joel Greenblatt presents his simple magic formula for value investing in the stock market.

This book is truly a little book, but it packs a punch. The writing style is truly engaging and funny. And at the same time, Joel very clearly teaches you the why and how of his system.

I'm not sure if "magic formula" is a name that inspires confidence, but after reading the book, you have a good understanding of it and you are able to apply it to your own investing.

The new edition adds a chapter discussing the 2007/2008 crisis and explains how the magic formula kept working throughout those years.

Because I really like this book, I also have some things I'd love to see improved in the next edition: I wish there was some more explanation of the limits of the system. Some companies are just not very well suited for the magic formula (which I understood after discussing the book with a much more experienced investor friend).

A final remark I have are the chapter names. Or the complete lack of them. It's difficult to find something back in the book, even though it's only about 150 pages.

But overall, great book and a must read for any one looking to invest in the market for the long term.

Ancillary Sword is the sequel to Ancillary Justice and it is the second book in the trilogy.

Breq is now (again?) in command of a star ship, but times have changed. She's not connected as she was before and is she really in control?

The entire story takes place in the Athoek station and planet and is smaller in scope than the previous book. It's about the local history and culture and the reasons why things are the way they are. It's not so much about the galaxy and the aliens that live in it.

Although the story is still interesting it feels a bit preachy from time to time and the parallels with our earth are obvious and intended. Combined with the smaller universe, I greatly preferred the first book, but I'm still looking forward to reading the next in the series.

In Antifragile, Nassim Taleb discusses the other side of fragile.

It's an interesting look at why some things are the way they are and why they will probably stay that way and why it may not be in your best interest to try to change them. It's also a guide on how you can apply these principles in your career, your health, or with you money.

Mr Taleb has a very quirky writing style that's usually funny, but sometimes a bit overly negative towards some of his peers. I felt that he was making some of the same errors that he accuses others of. Namely scientifically presenting anecdotal evidence. It didn't take away my enjoyment of the book.

This book has a number of lessons that are worth remembering.

Artemis is a thriller about a daring plan to thwart the mafia. So far, maybe nothing new. Except that this story is set on the moon. In the first, and currently only, city on the moon that houses a few thousand people in small quarters.

It's a great mix of thriller and science fiction. Unlike Andy Weir's previous book, The Martian, this one has less science and more fiction. It still paints an intriguing world that could be in our not-so-distant future.

Another year, another Tim Ferriss tome. At first, you may think this book is the same thing as last year's [b:Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers|31823677|Tools of Titans The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers|Timothy Ferriss|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1472831109s/31823677.jpg|52480873]. At least, I did.

However, there's a major difference. Tools of Titans contains condensed versions of hour long interviews with some top performers (as Tim likes to call them). Even if they are condensed, every person gets at least 10+ pages. Tribe of Mentors asks the same questions to hundreds of people and publishes their answers, sometimes with very little background information. Every one gets at most 5 pages for their answers.

Many times, I read an answer and was stuck wondering "why?", "I need more info". But there was no more info. This is the major issue I had with the book. There's just not much depth. It's a bunch of quotes that are easy to read, but do not offer much insight.

The good thing is that you get a lot of them. A whole lot. So, unlike Tools of Titans, where you may be tempted to skip certain parts, this one you can just read through. One page later, you'll be in an entirely different world.

Overall, this is still an ok book. But if you can't decide between Tools of Titans or Tribe of Mentors, you should go for Tools. It offers much more in depth information which was, to me, much more satisfying.

Dune Messiah was a bit disappointing to me, it was slow and was too engaged with the political conflict only. This book was the sequel I wanted.

Now that Paul is gone, his children, Leto and Ghanima, are being prepared to take over his throne. But not every one wants that to happen. This book is all about how they try to come to terms with who they are and how they can keep the empire peaceful in future generations.

Unlike the previous book, this one has action actually happening. It still has a lot of politics going on but that's perfectly fine. Children of Dune strikes the same balance that made the original Dune so engaging: a science-fiction opera with political intrigue against a very fleshed out universe with some great and still novel ideas to back it up.

Space Team is the story of Cal who finds himself the only human left alive and is tasked with saving a bunch of aliens that think he is a parent-eating serial killer (PS: he is not).

If that intrigues you, you'll love this book. It's a short, fun and quick read.

Space Team is a Science Fiction book that takes ideas from many other books in the genre. And that's perfectly fine. You're not going to read this one for the novel ideas or the intricate detailed technical descriptions. You want to read this for the strange and fun situations and strange and fun characters.

This book reminds me of [b: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy|386162|The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)|Douglas Adams|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388282444s/386162.jpg|3078186] in style and in goofiness. And I like to think that Mr. Hutchison found his inspiration there. It's a great homage and I plan to read the sequels in the Space Team series.

Python for Data Analysis is a very thorough overview of, mostly, the Pandas library. There is also coverage of numpy, matplotlib and a tiny bit of some modeling libraries, such as patsy and scikit-learn.

The examples and flow are good and it's a joy to follow along in your own Jupyter Notebook. The chapter on time-data was a bit less engaging than the others. It did contain lots of code, but most of the code was very basic and not immediately applicable.

I read the book through Safari, which comes with its own reader. I do wish it had sub-chapters. The current Safari version has 14 very very long chapters. The index is fine if you know what you are looking for, but if you are just want to browse and are looking for ideas to solve your current problem, it's difficult.

Origin is a science-fiction thriller. It plays in the very close future. Self-driving cars are a reality and a proper quantum computer has been developed.

A scientist and overall rich man has figured out the secret to life. But is this really something we want to know?

A lot of inspiration was drawn from existing people and authors. Think of Elon Musk, Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil and many others. If you follow these people, the book may not even feel like SF to you.

In general, I liked the story. The biggest part of the book is an Indiana Jones-like chase across Spain (mostly Barcelona), searching for artifacts, finding clues and solving riddles. This was a great and engaging read.

The final part of the book is a fairly long exposition, which contains interesting ideas, but felt a bit too drawn out.

The actual conclusion of the book was very short and could have used a bit more depth.

This is a book that will appeal to many people. If you like Dan Brown, if you like a good thriller, if you like some light SF, if you like a light read, if any of the above, this is for you.

The Daily Stoic contains 366 stoic quotes with commentary.

This book has generally well-chosen quotes by some of the more known stoics. The quotes or meditations are organized into 12 themes (one for each month of the year). Additional commentary is provided. Sometimes this gives deeper insides, sometimes it's an interesting read but not much is added.

In general, I really liked the selection of the quotes and the idea to read and think a little bit every day. Although I did read a few pages in one go to "catch up", it's not a book you can easily read from cover to cover.

I will keep coming back to this book from time to time.

As the title says, this is an introduction to NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming.

I didn't know anything about NLP before I read the book, so I can't say whether or not this is truly introduces the topic properly.

What I can say is that this is a well-written overview of many of NLP topics. It is filled with small stories and examples that have me convinced that Ready and Burton know their topic.

After reading the book, I feel like I do know enough about NLP to do something with it and I have enough background to find out new books should I want to go further with the topic.

And I guess that's exactly what the goal of this book is.

In this book, Ramit Sethi talks about the big things, the macro-optimizations, that you can do to change and upgrade your life.

If you are looking for tactics that you can apply right away and that will make an impact on your life tomorrow, this is probably not the right book and I think you're better of with some of Ramit's earlier writings.

This book is more one that makes you think about the bigger things and causes long-term change. This can be a good thing.

It also means it's a bit vague and hand-wavy and does not really deliver what the title promises, in my opinion.

On top of that, if you have been following Ramit for a while, there's very little original content here and there's a lot of promoting his higher ticket items.

So for me, this book was ok, but not much new. If you haven't read any of Ramit's writings, this is a very good introduction to his way of thinking.

In his podcast, Tim Ferriss has interviewed an impressive amount of business people, top performers, and other interesting men and women.

This book is a summary of those interviews. It contains the best advice and most gripping stories.
Tim has also added a number of smaller sections where he explains his own principles in life.

If you like the podcast because of its content, but don't like it because it's hard to keep focused for over an hour, this is the book you've always wanted. I have made an incredibly large amount of notes for later review. It's going to take some time to process everything.

If you didn't like Tim's previous books because they were a bit all-over-the-place. This book is worse. It is organized by subjects, but even then, it's not something you can read straight in one sitting.

Dune Messiah is the follow up of Dune. It's hard to be the sequel of one of the best SF books and it shows.

Dune Messiah takes place 10 years after the original Dune and chronicles Paul's time as emperor and the rise of his empire.

This book is a lot slower than its prequel and it's probably for the best that it is only half as thick. It takes 200 pages of setup, but the final 50 pages are yet another awesome roller coaster ride through the Dune universe.

The finale really does lift up the entire book and makes this book worth a read for every Dune fan.