The Art of Learning

This book chronicles of life of Josh Waitzkin. His early years are the subject matter for the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Josh was a young chess prodigy. He lived in New York, and learned chess from the hustlers on the street. Quickly he became strong enough at chess to beat everyone his age.

The first third of the book is about his early life and chess. The second part delves into his foray into the martial arts, specifically Tai Chi. I did not read past the first part of the book. I was only interested in his chess life.

Startup Land

This book tells the story of startup Zendesk. It was created by three guys in Dennmark. They created a software as a service for help desks. That is, you sign up for their product online. You pay for it online. There was initially not any heavy sales people involved.

The CEO is the narrator of the story. They had trouble getting funding in Dennmark. So they got an initial investment from a company in Boston. The 3 guys moved to Boston with their families to be close to their venture capitalist investor. That lasted for about a summer.

Later, the company had bigger follow on investments from venture capitalist firms in California. They moved to San Francisco to be close to those firms plus other startups. They eventually did an IPO and$9 a share. The share jumped up 50% on day 1, and quickly went up 100%.

The Legend of the Christmas Witch

This tells the story of young Santa Claus and his sister the witch. Santa was taken away by a couple that wanted a kid. The sister was taken in by a witch of the wood. The sister had powers. And they grew under the tutelage of the witch.

Eventually people got wind of the sister's powers. They wanted to hunt her down and kill her. So she set off in search of her brother, who she heard was at the north pole. She took a boat but landed at the south pole instead. There she met some penguins who became her friends.

Eventually she builds another boat and goes in search of her brother. She does find him. But the town folk want to kill her because she is a witch. She reunites one more time with her brother briefly. Then she became mad. And she stomps her feet, causing the ice to crack and the penguins and her to fall deep into the water and freeze.

Invest Like a Pro

I decided to give Amazon a little extra time to deliver a package to my house. In return, I got a $1 credit for digital goods. I spent it on this eBook: Invest Like a Pro (A 10-Day Investing Course). The title made me think I might learn some professional stock trading tips. Turns out this was a very basic small book on investing.

I did learn that a 403b was just like a 401k retirement plan. The only difference being that a 403b is run by a non-profit organization. That is not going to help me make money on stock trades. Neither did any other information from the book.

Little Children

Todd appears to be the main character. He was a college football star who wanted to go on to become a lawyer. But he can't pass the bar. His wife is a knockout who works at the Veteran's Administration hospital. Todd takes care of his young son Aaron. He is supposed to be studying to take the bar for the third time. Instead he has a summer affair with Sarah.

Sarah also has a young daughter. She has a weird distant husband. The husband himself has been fantasizing about an a deviant Internet model. Sarah eventually makes plans with Todd for each of them to leave their spouses behind.

Todd plays football with Larry, a retired cop who killed a kid. Larry has is out for Ronald, who is a child sex offender. At church, Larry breaks Ronald's arm by tossing him onto the pavement. Larry later causes Ronald's mom to have a stroke and die. Ronald dreams of purchasing a computer to take advantage of all the alleged porn on it.