218 Books in 2018 - A Project.
in Reading List
This is a reading project Shravan Venkataraman started.
Background: In July 2017, after quitting my job to pursue an opportunity, I discovered stock markets and slowly as I explored more, I found myself being drawn into it deeply. In the last six months of 2017, the more I explored Finance and Financial markets, the more it became clearer to me that I was very deeply attracted towards the study of Statistics, Statistical experiments, building robust models rooted in Statistics and eventually found the world of Quant Finance.
In March 2018, I made a surprising discovery. Since January 2018, I’ve been listening to audiobooks and reading books every now and then, and in March when I recounted how many books I’d completed, the list stood at 18. That was 6 books per month and more than 1 book per week. It was kind of surprising given that I had so much going on during those months. So, I set myself a challenge of a target. That has led to the project that this article is about.
Note: I have a full time job as an entrepreneur with a manufacturing business that I have been pursuing since I left my job as a programmer. Whatever I am doing_-_reading books, pursuing Quant Finance, is strictly outside of business hours.
The Challenge:
218 Books in 2018. That’s the target. To finish 218 books in a year is overreaching, yes. I am at the count of 65 books now by the 20th of June 2018. I have six months to go and if I have to complete the target, I have to read at an accelerated pace for the next six months and I have to finish over 150 books in the remaining six months. That’s a hard challenge, but I am not one to shy away from a challenge.
The ultimate aim of this project is not to complete 218 books, although that would be awesome. The aim then, is to read. It is to develop the passion I have for reading and acquire the knowledge and wisdom that other people have left for me in those books.
The books are not haphazardly picked. There’s a certain level of rigor and structure to the book picking and it’s still in progress.
I am reading books in the following topics: Economics, Financial Markets, Psychology, Statistics, Statistical Experiments, Data and the science of data, Fallacies of the human mind, Neuropsychology, Consciousness, the art of Zen and Stoicism. These are all inter-related in a way that fits perfectly for my goals, in the path of becoming a quantitative trader.
I have started this journey from scratch. I have a Computer Science background. I have three years of work experience as a Programmer developing software for a Top-50 tech company from the Silicon Valley. My goal is to fill the gaps I have between Computer Science and Quant Finance, and which I can then translate into real world applications.
Without further ado, the following are the lists I have made on GoodReads (unfortunately GoodReads doesn’t let you make a list with more than 100 books, so I have broken the list into 3 parts). The list of books that I am reading in 2018 is still under construction. So far I have identified 170 books (of which I have finished 65 till date) and they are in the following lists.
The following are the rules that I have set up:
- If I don’t enjoy a particular book, I will read a chapter more to see if it gets interesting, otherwise, I will drop it from the list and add a new book in place of the one I didn’t enjoy.
- The books can be audiobooks or visual.
- Archive the completed books in a folder & mark books as read with a small review on Goodreads.
Essentially, I am going to push myself to finish the 218 books. Even if I don’t finish 218 and end up somewhere around 120-150 range (which is more realistic at this point), I’d still be happier. But I am going to give it my best shot.
Do you have any recommendations for the remaining 48 books? Do you have better recommendations to replace any book in the current 170 that I have listed?
Please feel free to comment and recommend me the best books on the topics that I have mentioned and I’ll add them to my list and will take it up as part of this challenge.
I will update my progress on a weekly basis in follow up articles.
