My eyes are glued to my charts. But when it's this slow there is time for a quick post or two. I type this with ONE eye.
"The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (Hardcover)" http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Rational...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257299271&sr=8-1 Strongly recommended. Guaranteed classic, and perhaps the best financial book of the year.
A really good friend of mine is really quite a character and you may find his obsession interesting. Years ago this friend of mine had a business idea where he would pick up the local newspaper every week to see where the library sales were, and after researching which types of books held the highest resale value, he would go to these 'brown bag' sales and buy up as much as he possibly could. I say brown bag because the libraries selling the books would sell them by the bag, as opposed to individually, and the stuffed bags would go for something trivial like $3 or $4. So, after picking up 20 or 30 bags, he would map out and hit up all the used book stores around Detroit, and sell each book anywhere from $2 to sometimes up to $20+ and whatever he had left over, he would take to John King books in Detroit, who would clean out the rest. To this point, obviously this is a cool and creative way to make some side cash for a book lover BUT, the real charm of this story is that he would then take the made proceeds and buy one or two extremely rare books. When I say rare, I mean books that were literally centuries old and after years of him doing this, he actually has so many bookshelves of these rare books in his home, that EVERY single room holds a different library of everything from literature and poetry to fiction and nonfiction as well as biographies. Tens of thousands of value built with a cost base of time and enjoyment. Currently through his passions and knowledge base, he built and manages one of the most successful used book departments in a Barnes and Noble located in a suburb of Detroit. **On a side note, a few years ago one of his patrons brought in an autographed Hunter Thomson book and sold it to him for $20. My buddy said he was shaking during the transaction because he felt guilty that he knew the value was so much greater than what he paid. On a side note, besides the signature, Hunter also wrote something along the lines of, "Don't go to sleep before 1 am at Hell's Angel's parties" LOL I can honestly say that I have some of the coolest and most unique friends that a person can have.
In his store yes, and it is quite successful. Another cool thing about my buddy I'd like to ad to give you further depth on this part of the country is that he use to always give me books like different reads of Art of War and various Napoleon Hill books. He's uniquely generous. I have to laugh because he many times will give friends of mine whom he never met before things of value like maybe a Zegna or Armani neck tie or even possibly a spiderman number 10 in fair or something! lol Just a one of a kind cool and unique character.