Common Sense Economics

I just finished reading Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity. This book is an introduction to the key fundamentals of Economics, as well as a bit of Personal Finance. It’s a relatively small book too, one you can easily read in a day. This is a great book to read if you are new to Economics, haven’t studied Economics for a long time, or if you are currently clueless about your money and/or the Economy.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I borrowed it from the library, but I intend to purchase my own copy soon. Both for future reference and so I can loan it to friends. It makes for a great Economics primer and the section on Government’s role in Economics is excellent, and quite timely given the current insanity in our nation’s bailout-addicted political climate.

My Reading List

I’m not sure why, but I’ve had the desire for many years now to keep a list of all the books I read. I have failed to do this for a long time now, but I’m going to give it another try. I think this website will provide a good way to do it. I can simply write a quick post when I finish reading something, write a few quick thoughts about it, and keep all of these posts in one category so I can easily reference them later. For anyone following my list, I hope I can at least provide you a few good recommendations and ideas…and perhaps what to avoid.

I’m going to get started by listing the books I’ve read recently. Then, for all future posts, I hope to have one post per book with some (hopefully) worthwhile thoughts to go along with it.

Over the past month or so I have read the following:

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – I had never read this, but I vaguely remember seeing a film version when I was a child. Overall, the book was excellent, though at times a bit dry. There are sections of the book that contain long, detailed descriptions of sea creatures. This probably adds to the ‘realism’ the book is going for, but it can feel like a bit of a chore at times. However, there were plenty of suspenseful and action-packed sequences to keep you engaged. This is definitely one you should read if you never have before.

A Christmas Carol – Reading this was a bit odd as I have seen many different versions of the story in cartoons and movies. Knowing the basic story going in, it’s a little more difficult to engage in the book. It’s fairly short, so you can knock it out quickly if you like. This is an unusual case where I would not automatically say the book is better than film versions of the story, yet it’s a little hard to compare because I have been so heavily exposed to this story in so many different ways on film. Still a worthwhile read however.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – This one was really interesting to me. One of the first things I noticed was the horrible racism and lack of education afflicting the characters in this story. Strongly influenced by the time and place I’m sure, but none-the-less this was a little hard to get past at times. The story was quite compelling and there was quite a bit of action and intrigue. Of course, all throughout this interesting story, you are being punched in the face with the sickening racism of the day. It’s hard for me to believe this story took place in our country. I guess it’s good that we have stories like this around so we can see how bad things were and how far we’ve come as a country, yet at the same time it’s something I’d rather not spend much time thinking about.