Everything Paul Buchheit has bought from Amazon in the last 3 years | Hacker News Reader

Everything Paul Buchheit has bought from Amazon in the last 3 years

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

55 pointswhalesalad42 comments

Love 156: "Basic Economics," Thomas Sowell is the Dr. Seuss of market economics.

Maybe I'm not seeing the obvious but how do you get a list with past purchases?

Er, I do know you can log into your account and check your past purchases very easily but that isn't very convenient if you want to post that list on your blog with links to the books.

Is there a convenient API call or do you have to resort to html scraping?

Can't find anything like that in the Amazon API documentation but maybe I'm just blind... :D

It seems that's what Blippy, the company Paul mentions at the beginning, does: http://blippy.com/

  93. Rules of the Game

I thought Paul was married :)

That's a great book, not just for getting laid ;) It teaches you a lot about the human mind. It opened my door to NLP as well (neuro-linguistic programming) which I have a few books on but have yet to really dive into. It's a fast and entertaining read.

The Game is a better read. Rules of the Game feels like leftovers.

Agreed. "The Game" was so amusing that I bought "Rules of the Game", but it doesn't have much substance.

Some excellent titles throughout this list. I'm currently enjoying 'Tell Me a Story: Narrative and Intelligence (Rethinking Theory)'. Such a great read.

Very little finance/investment reading. I am surprised.

my lame speculation:

a.) once you're that wealthy, i don't think you care too much about 'get rich quick' or 'crazy investment strategies of the week' books anymore. you probably stash your money somewhere safe

b.) i'm sure paul cares a lot more about hacking than the latest fads in finance/investment

"you probably stash your money somewhere safe".

Yet unless you have a good understanding of basic investment principles (and I mean principles grounded in rigorous theories which you will likely not find in the kinds of books you mention), you won't know what "safe" means.

Not to mention he is an active angel investor, which is basically as risky as it can get, so that makes sense to safely diversify.

This is crucial. He is a tech startup angle, not enough literature for those, it's mostly gut feeling and personal experience. Hard to write valuation texts for this industry.

At AngelConf, I seem to remember he said most of his money was invested very conservatively.

I'm not aware of any good books on investing, other than Taleb. (which isn't to say there aren't any, just that the ones I've started to read aren't very impressive)

Paul,

I don't know about he level of your economic and financial sophistication, but just to get your feet wet, skim the following:

The Handbook of Financial Instruments, Frank Fabozzi, editor. A bird's eye view of what is out there.

The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin Graham. The book the created the Value Investing philosophy, by Warren Buffet's teacher. Buffet was the only student in that class to get an A+.

Financial Statement Analysis, Fridson and Alvarez. How to read corporate reports and papers; whatever the CFOs want you to see,.

The Secrets of Economic Indicators, Bernard Baumohl. How to read the whole economy's report cards.

Hedges on Hedge Funds, James Hedges. Exactly what you need to know before you hand over your money to a hedge fund. Hopefully, the first book above by Fabozzi told you how many baskets you have available to put your eggs in. Hedge Funds rarely outperform the market, but that's not the whole story.

The Vital Few vs The Trivial Many, George Muzea. Good stuff :-) more geared toward active investors (even traders) but it's a good, insightful read. The mindset of "who should I listen to" is excellent. If you make a habit of reading financial statements, and scanning the market from time to time, seeing how movements in a given stock correspond with company news (a fun hobby, btw!) then you will get something from this book, specially on insider trading.

That's it for now.

Recommend start at '156.' and scroll upwards.

Just a few non-books though, and people has been sharing book lists for years. If Paul really wants to test the privacy implications of this trend and see what it feels like, he should post a history of his bank accounts, yeah by all means edit it but still.

I think real geeks can't understand the benefits of social networking because we are not really that social. We should accept it already: technology's main use in the next decade will be for ego inflation and vanity with Twitter, Blippy and the rest being on the leading edge. Triumph of empty form over substance.

The world has always functioned on ego inflation and vanity, though. From 500-1500, it was "You can be more righteous than your neighbors if you just believe our priests." From 1500-1900, it was "You can be more wealthy than your neighbors if you just invest in our venture." From 1900-1995, it was "You can be more attractive than your neighbors if you buy our product." From 1995-present, it was "You can be smarter than your neighbors if you visit our website."

It's interesting how this corresponds with the most idolized caste in society at the time. From 500-1500, it was the clergy. From 1500-1900, it was the financier/plantation-owner/prospector/industrialist. From 1900-1995, it was the starlet. From 1995-present, it's the geek.

Substance is nothing more than empty form that nobody likes. (Or, as the musician sometimes says it, "What does it say about classical music that its antonym is 'popular' music?")

156 items in 3 years? That is obscene. He averaged one purchase per week from amazon over this time period, which basically makes Amazon.com PB's religion.

If you s/Amazon.com/public library/, that is fairly typical of people who read a lot. There is a LiveJournal community called 50bookchallenge that encourages people to read 50 books a year, keep track of them, and share what they're reading with others. It has 7000+ members. My reading lists for 2003-2006:

2003: http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/24851.html

2004: http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/60579.html

2005: http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/83785.html

2006: http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/105646.html

(The part I can't imagine is spending so much money on books when the library is perfectly adequate, but I imagine that's not so much of a concern for PB.)

The money isn't my primary problem with buying so many books, though it is a factor...it's the weight of having all those books. When I moved from Austin I sold 26 boxes of books and several bookshelves. I promised myself I would never collect that many books again. I'm moving into an RV this week, and so had to sell all the remaining books (and any that I'd collected since that last move), and I sold 8 boxes of books and three book shelves.

Having large piles of things, like books, makes it too easy to slip into a rut and stay in the same place doing the same thing out of mere inertia (more mass==more inertia, and books en masse are heavy).

"Having large piles of things, like books, makes it too easy to slip into a rut and stay in the same place doing the same thing out of mere inertia (more mass==more inertia, and books en masse are heavy)."

This is excellent insight and something most people don't consider until they have to move for the first time after a few years in the real world and suddenly their possessions which used to fit in the back of a SUV in their college days now require a small truck to move.

The problem is also compounded if you are the kind of person that feels bad about throwing away perfectly good books etc... out.

Tell me about it:-( I've shipped mine across the Atlantic several times, and it's not cheap. I think when e-books hit the sweet spot for even technical things, I'll probably get one and sell off the real books, even though it would hurt to do that, as I really love books.

A friend bought me a Kindle for Christmas. I still have issues with the non-sharable nature of Kindle books, but the convenience factor so dramatically outweighs everything else that I'm willing to live with the negatives. It basically comes down to ebooks or no books (or very few), since my living space is becoming so much smaller.

Maybe he gives them to friends or a local library after he's done?

You can return any new book bought on Amazon within 30 days, as long as you pay return postage, so it is, in a sense, a library.

Postage can get rather hefty for some of those books. (Though I admit I did this with some of my textbooks in college...I'd register for the course, buy the textbook, read the whole textbook in the first week, return the textbook for a full refund, and then drop the course and take something else.)

I donated a bunch of books to the library, as well, but that was problematic...I don't have a car, so hauling boxes worth of books to the library on my bike one backpack full at a time was time-consuming.

If I'd thought to donate them immediately after reading them (as though I were simply returning checked out books), it would have worked better. But I never trained myself to think that way about books I bought. But, the library here in Mountain View is extremely good; it was very rare that I wanted a book that they didn't have, though sometimes I had to wait a week or two for a copy to show up.

...he stated that he has not read most of the books he purchased. That is what makes it obscene...they are impulse buys...

I concurrently read 2-3 books per week; just finished one since yesterday morning. And it's not a hobby.

It depends how big the books are. How much time do you spend reading everyday?

What do you mean when you say it is not a hobby? Is it your job?

Not a job, but it's stuff that keeps the job/company/vision straight. Broke into an industry all on my own with no training, mentor or previous experience.

This is exactly what I am thinking. The problem with it is that I am by far not fast or concentrated enough for doing this parallel to my job. I still wonder if I ever will be able to speed read. Is there a special technique or habit you have embraced or developed? It would be so great being able to read real literature again and not only having time for technical books. Sometimes I feel like turning into a machine myself.

2-3 books/week isn't really speed reading, it's just making time for reading. Say that you have 3 hours/day that you can devote to reading. That's 21 hours/week. If you read a fairly average 60 pages/hour, a typical 300 page book will take 5 hours, and you'll be able to read 4 of them a week. At 100 pages/hour, you're at 3 hours for a book and will be able to read 7 (or cut your reading time down to an hour a day and still read 2-3/week).

It's much like programming though - you have to do it in big blocks or you won't get anything done. The first 15 minutes is just getting into the book, your mind wanders, and you don't get much out of it. It's once you've curled up for a half hour or more that you start really getting into it and can get decent reading speeds.

I've placed about 130 orders through Amazon in the past two years, which is more than once a week.

Having Prime (free 2-day shipping) helps a lot. They sell almost everything: I've bought books, yes, but also protein powder, grocery items, exercise equipment, notebook batteries, tools, screws, jeans, and shoes.

My mother buys at least 1 book per day on average from amazon. (she can read very very fast)

I can get through a book in on average - for a 250 page hardback - a week, so this isn't obscene.

...wow people downvoted the crap out of that comment. He said he has not even read many of the books he has bought. Clearly a lot of those are impulse buys. There is nothing wrong with that...we all make impulse purchases...I was just saying that is a lot of impulse purchases.

Make your mind up.

"a lot of those are impulse buys. There is nothing wrong with that"

three minutes later,

"That is what makes it obscene...they are impulse buys..."

Yeah, I was using it in the hyperbolic sense. I am not actually offended by PB's Amazon purchases.

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