If I ever visit your home, prepare to be judged. No, I won’t be assessing your furniture, or your flooring, or your kitchen, or the cars in your garage, or even the cocktail you pour me (I trust you will make it strong). I will, however, be judging your bookshelf.
Why will I do this? Well, because you can tell a lot about a person by their literary choices. And as a literature professor once told me, “You are what you read,” and I concur. Hey, if you read nothing but junk food, well, your mind might correctly be assessed as unhealthy. Worse yet, that mind might also correctly be characterized as intellectually incurious, which to me is the true original and unforgivable sin.
Today, I am going to give you a glimpse of some of my literary choices, the ones that I refer to as the “books always on my desk.” That’s because these are books that I’m constantly consulting in my quest for beauty, truth, wisdom and all the things that make life sublime.
Some of these books I use regularly in my role as the editor and investment director of Investing Edge and my other newsletter advisory publications. Others I use when I need an infusion of philosophic genius, or when I’m looking for just the right word, or when I just want to be immersed in the power of a beautifully written sentence.
Atop this stack of books always on my desk is “The Maxims of Wall Street,” by my friend and Fast Money Alert co-editor Dr. Mark Skousen.
“The Maxims,” now headed for its amazing 12th edition, is a collection of quotes by some of the brightest luminaries in the world of investing, politics, economics, philosophy and numerous other fields. If it’s a profundity about the nature of money and investing, it’s a strong bet that you’ll find it in “The Maxims.”
A few days ago, Mark told me that the 11th edition of “The Maxims” has sold out, but that the new 12th edition has just arrived from the printer. Unfortunately, you can’t get the 12th edition in time for Christmas, but this book is the kind of gift you can give to yourself, or anyone, anytime of the year.
The 12th edition features many new quotations, including several by Mark’s colleagues at Eagle Financial Publications. I am honored to say that Mark has included another quote from me in this edition, and it reads as follows: “Fast money is a fickle mistress. She moves about quickly, and she always goes to where she’s treated best.” — Jim Woods (p. 101)
The new edition also includes several quotes from Hugh Grossman, editor of DayTradeSPY. My favorite here is the Franklin-esque, “A dime at a time is perfectly fine.” (for option traders, p. 139)
It’s an incredible and humbling honor to be quoted multiple times in “The Maxims,” alongside the likes of Warren Buffett, J.P. Morgan, Adam Smith, Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Skousen and other giant brains that move the world. This book is a must that you should also always have on your desk, so get yours today.
Now, speaking of brains that move the world, a copy of the novel “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand sits just underneath “The Maxims” in the photo here of the books always on my desk.
The plot of this epic literary masterpiece is that those big brains, the men of the mind who truly move the world, and the ones who the world should be eternally grateful for, decide to go “on strike” and remove themselves from a society that doesn’t value their contribution. Indeed, a society intent on trying to debase, defile and destroy the virtues these men and women embody. Rand called this concept the “hatred of the good for being good,” and when the men of the mind can’t take it any longer, they show the world what it’s like when they’re no longer willing to participate in their own immolation.
The copy pictured here is the actual copy I first read in the summer of 1984 right before my freshman year at UCLA. The book altered my life, as it tossed me headfirst into a world of ideas in action, and what the meaning of a heroic life can and ought to be. Of all the books always on my desk, this is the one most responsible for creating my soul.
If you have never read “Atlas Shrugged,” or if you haven’t read it in a long time, I implore you to embark on this glorious literary and philosophic journey. It’s an epic plot novel that takes you on a literary train ride that you shall forever be changed by for the better.
Below “Atlas Shrugged” is the work of one of the greatest journalists and social commentators of all time, H.L. Mencken, and the collection of his writings titled, “A Carnival of Buncombe.”
Just the title alone, featuring the onomatopoeic “buncombe,” a word that means insincere or foolish talk, or basically nonsense, is reflective of the punch this work packs. Buncombe was a word Mencken was fond of using, and he employed it in his rapier-like critiques of the political and social hypocrisy of his day.
This collection of articles, originally published in the Baltimore Sun in the 1920s and 1930s, is as relevant today for its biting sarcasm and wordplay as it was when Mencken was castigating the likes of Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover. It makes me pine with wonder about just how brilliant a critique of the current political zeitgeist Mencken would have offered, as you know he would have plenty of buncombe to call out.
Below Mencken is my go-to source when I want just the precise word to reflect my thinking. This copy of “The Oxford Desk Thesaurus” also has sentimental value, as it was given to me by my mother several decades ago. Perhaps more than anyone else, my mother, still spry and spunky at age 88, is responsible for my love of books, literature and learning. For that gift I shall always be eminently grateful, and that is no buncombe!
Finally, we have another one of the best novels of the 20th century, the epic and sprawling meditation on modern life, “Underworld” by Don DeLillo. The cleaver plot device that employs the baseball hit by Bobby Thomson in the 1951 Giants-Dodgers championship game, known as “the shot heard ’round the world,” connects multiple characters through some five decades, as the historic baseball passes from owner to owner, linking the characters, events and themes that make up the matrix of American life in the second half the century.
Yet, the cleaver plot device isn’t the reason why “Underworld” is a book always on my desk. The main reason is because DeLillo is a master wordsmith capable of some of the most brilliant writing ever put to pen. Check out this sentence from the novel, which touches on the beauty and potential of technology:
“A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rumbling past. It makes reality come true.”
One reality that comes true for me when I read DeLillo, Rand, Mencken or the many quotes in “The Maxims,” is that true masters of their craft just seem to float above the rest; effortlessly, and on a sublime cloud most of us can only aspire to ascend.
Yet their existence, and their work, reminds me that I should always continue to climb toward these heights. And to get there, I shall stand on the shoulders of the giants firmly ensconced in the books always on my desk.
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A Long December
And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
–Counting Crows, “A Long December”
It’s been a long December indeed, although the more Decembers I log, the more evanescent they seem. And herein lies the lesson of life that we all must seat firmly in our consciousness, because as the Counting Crows remind us, we must tell ourselves to hold on to these moments as they pass. One day, they all shall pass, so hold them tight and treat them like gold, because they are.
Wisdom about money, investing and life can be found anywhere. If you have a good quote that you’d like me to share with your fellow readers, send it to me, along with any comments, questions and suggestions you have about my newsletters, seminars or anything else. Click here to ask Jim.
In the name of the best within us,
Jim Woods
