My Reading List from 2019
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Self improvement is always a big focus for me. One of the daily habits I worked on most throughout 2019 was to incorporate more reading of books. My target was 10 books read, and I hit it spot on. I’m looking to build on that number in 2020, but first, here is the list of books I read last year and some thoughts on what I took away from each of them.
#1 – The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
Every year, Buffett writes a letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. The letter helps explain his decision-making, the direction of the business, and the long-term outlook of the company. In this book, author Lawrence A. Cunningham compiles the key learnings from Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letters from 1979 through 2006. What makes the book so impactful is that Cunningham keeps the integrity of Buffett’s words from the letter, but reorders them by theme to make them much easier to learn from. There are close to 50 books that mention Warren Buffett’s name in the title, but he calls this one his favorite. You can read my full recap about the book here.
#2 – Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need
I was excited to read this book, as it was written by Grant Sabatier, a blogger who I started reading consistently when I started my own money journey. This is much more than your typical money book. Grant focuses on mindset, getting the most value for your time, career growth, investing early and often, side hustles, and many other key themes. He hit rock bottom in 2010 with only $2.26 left in his bank account. This sparked him on his journey to amassing a $1.25 million net worth by the age of 30. I found this book comprehensive, but easy to read and highly approachable. You can read my full recap about the book here.
#3 – Atomic Habits
This was by far my favorite book that I read the whole year. It was so good, I may even re-read it this year! Author James Clear writes that “Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through repetition.” Rather than setting goals and trying to reach them, he discusses how we can implement systems that will lead to the results we’re aiming to achieve. Habits are a topic that I find fascinating, and I learned a lot about how to establish better daily habits and break bad ones. I would highly recommend that everyone read this book.
#4 – Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
This book is a fictionalized biography of famous stock trader Jesse Livermore. Originally published in 1923, the book has continued to be a classic nearly 100 years later. It discusses how Livermore learned how to trade stocks, the lessons he picked up, and his many successes and failures throughout his life. One of the most interesting aspects of the book was that even though times have changed, so many of the lessons have proven to be timeless. Anyone interested in stock trading would find some wisdom within this book. You can read my full recap about the book here.
#5 – Good Stocks Cheap: Value Investing with Confidence for a Lifetime of Stock Market Outperformance
Longtime readers know that I’m a big fan of investing in index funds, but in my spare time it’s been interesting to learn about value investing. Value investing is about looking beyond the share price and instead focusing on a company’s intrinsic value. Value investors try to find the intrinsic value of a business through research. Someday I may use a small portion of my portfolio to practice this style of investing. Before reading this book, I had never looked at specific stocks in this level of detail. This book takes it step-by-step and makes the process easier to follow.
#6 – You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits
This book is written as a guide to finding specific overlooked investment opportunities in the stock market. He discusses a variety of special situations where big profits are possible and includes case studies to show practical examples. Some of these special situations include spin-offs, bankruptcies, restructuring, and mergers.
#7 – Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required
Another book written by bloggers that I’ve followed for years! This one is written by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung from Millennial Revolution. Their story details how they retired at 31 years old with a million dollar portfolio and began traveling the world full-time. They discuss cutting expenses, increasing income, investments, travel, and designing an unconventional lifestyle. This was an entertaining and smooth read, for the inexperienced and experienced alike.
#8 –Trading Commodities and Financial Futures: A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering the Markets
#9 – The Complete TurtleTrader: How 23 Novice Investors Became Overnight Millionaires
This book is a true story about Wall Street legend Richard Dennis, and his disciples, the Turtles. Dennis made millions of dollars on Wall Street by investing according to a few simple rules. He gets into a debate with his partner about whether his successful techniques can be taught to anyone, or whether trading is a skill that someone must be born with. Dennis spent two weeks teaching the Turtles about his investment rules and philosophy, and then they started trading his money in the market. The book goes into detail about this ultimate trend following experiment.
#10 – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The only true fiction book on this list. I was a big fan of the Harry Potter series while growing up. I read the first 4 books multiple times each, and the fifth and sixth book once. Somehow I never finished the last book. At the end of the year I decided it was time to complete the series, re-reading this book as a refresher and then reading the seventh book for the first time in early 2020.
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