Books

I watched the seventh Harry Potter last night and I was pleasantly surprised. The series grew up a bit, had better acting (although Daniel Radcliffe who plays Harry continued to be a bit awkward) and stayed very true to the book. I remember reading the series as a kid at camp, and I remember downloading the books to listen to during my several cross country road trips. Now that I'm clocking finance from 9 to 9, seven days a week, it's all I can do to keep on top of my economist and crawl through a novel a month. But when I was growing up reading played a big part of how I formed my identity, and so I'm going to quickly reminise the novels that formed the pre-finance me.

Pre-High School
After going through the Bearnstein Bears type books it was time to get into some of the real adventure novels.

I think the first series I read myself was Narnia. I remember it started out great, but I almost dropped the series on the book in the desert with the cat. It took several years to realize C.S. Lewis's habit of making his stories metaphores for stories from the old testimate.

After Narnia I think I went straight into the Golden Compass trilogy. A lot of people dropped this after the first book, but the Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass held their weight. This series was followed quickly with Tolkens Hobbit and LOTR, a few Dragon Lance novels and of course Potter, but in general I was getting a bit more interested in feeding some more tangible desires.

Around grade 5 or 6 I read my first Christopher Pike novel. These were page turner murder mystery / horror novels written for a high school audience. I don't think my parents realized I kept asking for Pike novels because they consistently had soft core sex scenes, not because I really liked solving the mystery.

High School
At about grade 10 I read my first Ayn Rand novel - Fountain Head - and it hit me at exactly the right time. I ended up reading Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and her essays (virtue of selfishness being the best), but Fountain Head's Howard Roark and Elsworth Toohey really struck a cord with me and I continue to see her characters in the leaders of today. It definitely led to a lot of introspection on what I wanted in life and how I planned on getting it. Of course over time I have found lots of places her theory of "objectivism" doesn't work, and that nobody really could ever be any of her characters, only a mixture of all of them. Still her work is a metaphor for a way of life I still identify with, and although my quote marked book is back in Canada here is an 'essence' quote.

Howard Roark - Protagonist

The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man -- and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men.

After Rand I was coaxed to read some more of the classics, Crime and Punishment, East of Eden, and period pieces like Shindler's List. Although they had good messages, I still liked the brute philosophy in fiction approach more. This lead to reading a bunch of Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom being the favorite.

Since then my studies pushed me towards a lighter plate, and so from the top of my head here's a list of books good enough to read twice.

• The Giver - Aimed at a highschool audience but good message. Similar to Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut
• Life of Pi - A good metaphor about faith
• Ishmael - Existentialism in fiction 
• Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Same
• Logic of Life, Freakanomics - New age behavioural economics
• Liars Poker - A 'get jazzed about wall street' book
• Fooled by Randomness - Taleb's book about asset bubbles.

And that's about it for now. I am definitely looking forward to graduating when I will finally have time to... oh wait... 10k's are pretty good reads too I guess.