What Sheri’s Reading: 2016 Reading Challenge

Good news! Since I achieved my 25-book 2015 Reading Challenge with time to spare, I’ve upped the ante, setting my Goodreads 2016 Reading Challenge at 38 books.

Gulp. Fortunately, I’ve got a great source of SAGEbroadview inspiration to help me achieve my lofty goal. Larry’s son and Chris’ younger brother Jeff Annello recently joined Shane Parish at Farnam Street. This is an enviable position indeed, but it’s no doubt a time-consuming one as well, as evidenced by Jeff’s post, “Just Twenty-five Pages a Day.”

His suggestion is simple but brilliant: Chunk it. By committing to taking on just 25 pages each day, we book-aholics can enjoy our awesome careers as well as our Admirable Addiction. You might say we can have our books and read them too.

I’m pleased to report I’m off to a good start…I’ve read 7 books so far this year. Why don’t you set your own reading challenge – and join me!

Here is some shorter fare you might find of interest:

• During Market Turmoil, Just Listen to Your Financial Plan (Carl Richards)
  Instead of trying to time the market based on someone’s forecast, why not use your financial plan as a touchstone? Every time you’re tempted to follow the advice of someone who sounds really smart, go back to your plan. Remind yourself that it takes into account the fact that the markets are going to go up and down. It reflects some reasonable assumptions about how markets are going to behave. But, perhaps most important, your financial plan is built upon the understanding that there are going to be good years and bad years, and that nobody can predict what kind of year the coming one will be.

• More reasons to avoid despair (Scott Grannis)
  In this post I offer more than a dozen charts which make the case for remaining optimistic, that things are getting better – albeit slowly – not worse.

• Scammers fake Social Security email (SocialSecurity.gov)
  The subject line says “Get Protected,” and the email talks about new features from the Social Security Administration (SSA) that can help taxpayers monitor their credit reports, and know about unauthorized use of their Social Security number. It even cites the IRS and the official-sounding “S.A.F.E Act 2015.” It sounds real, but it’s all made up. It’s a phishing email to get you to click on a scammer’s link.

• You’re obsessed with outcomes. Here’s why attention to process pays off. (Barry Ritholz)
  We never really know what the source of a good outcome is; however, we have a high degree of confidence what the probabilities are for a good process. A strong process is a guarantee — not of outcome or results, but of the highest probability of obtaining desired results. That’s why it is so important to investors.

• This happens all the time (Josh Brown)
  What’s taking people’s breath away about this year’s stock market sell-off is probably some combination of three things: A) we’re unaccustomed to it, we’ve been spoiled for years, and B) it’s global in nature (and some would say global in origin), and C) the speed of the selling is incredible, by any historical standard – it feels like a whoosh straight down.But as disorienting as this all feels, the truth is that double-digit drawdowns from prior highs in the S&P 500 are not an anomaly – they are the norm, statistically speaking. In fact, this happens during 2 out of every 3 years. 

By the way, these articles were all recently posted to my Twitter feed. Next week on our blog we will share a primer to help you get started on Twitter.

Sage Serendipity:  There are some books so intense that the word ‘challenge’ is the perfect description.  In this week’s New York Times Book Review Tom Bissell wrote an essay for the anniversary of Infinite Jest: Everything About Everything: David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’ at 20.  

Bissell discusses in his essay, adapted from from the book’s foreward, what makes this (or any) book a classic. On the author’s challenge of a book withstanding the test of time, he writes:  “David Foster Wallace understood the paradox of ­attempting to write fiction that spoke to posterity and a contemporary audience simultaneously.”  There is also the reader’s challenge: “To fully understand what Wallace was up to, the book bears being read, and reread, with Talmudic focus and devotion. For many Wallace readers this is asking too much. For many Wallace fans this is asking too much. ”

Maybe 25 pages of Infinite Jest a day would be a great 2016 challenge in itself. At 1,104 pages, 25 a day will take about 44 days to finish.