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15 October 2026
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Please use the comment section to share your most enjoyable book of 2016.
It will soon be the time of year when people turn their mind to casual reading, so tell us your best book. It could be an oldie or a newie, and let's get a reading list going.
I enjoyed dusting off 'Nudge' by Thaler and Sunstein. Great insights into how people behave and make decisions, often counterintutive.
I've been getting into the audiobook format this year. I quite enjoyed 'reading' The Good Girl, by Mary Kubica while out walking! A suspense/thriller told from the different perspectives of each character.
Alastair Campbell's 'Winners and How They Succeed' is an easy read, describing how dozens of people have made a massive impact on society.
Snap. Did the same. There is a film also. Very refreshing. Looking forward to reading Michael Lewis' new book: The Undoing Project - about the partnership between Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman who wrote many brilliant papers on why we are such poor intuitive statisticians and related behavioural economics topics.
Too many fans of Thaler? A great summary of his work in Misbehaving, The Making of Behavioural Economics.
The Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape, a great read for the young ones to start on the journey to financial literacy and for the older generation who did not bother.
'I Am Pilgrim' by Terry Hayes Brilliant
Yes, I Am Pilgrim a great read!
Indeed Jeremy. 'Thinking fast and slow' is the Book of the Decade.
Why Minsky Matters, by L Randall Wray. Minsky was a maverick economist who the mainstream rejected as a crackpot ... yet his theories of how an economy and markets work was vindicated by the global financial crisis. His core idea is that 'stability is inherently destabilising' Sounds odd, but it means that the longer we have stable predictable markets the more greed will embolden people to lever up ... the eventual result is the additional leverage makes the market/economy unstable... resulting in a spectacular meltdown ie you need to embrace capitalisms cycles for capitalism to work. Minsky's own work was very hard slog ... but this book from one of his students is a well written read that brings clarity to this Bear Grylls of the economist world to life.
On a light hearted note try GIRT a history of Australia that will have you laughing at every page and learning as well
Narconomics; How to run a drug cartel, by Tom Wainwright. This book is an expose par excellence, written in an engaging style. It looks at the South American drug cartels through an economists eyes - similar to Freakonomics - the beauty here is the dispassionate observation of drug cartels as corporate businesses with their gruesome actions as being the inevitable outcomes of drug 'CEOs' trying to make ends meet. Its so good that next year McKinsey will probably turn it into a powerpoint. watch Narcos on Netflix, then read this book ... it will make you question everything you believe about how to tackle the illicit drug industry. highly recommended for the beach
Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar is loosely about jokes and their relationships to different strands of philosophy. It's side-splittingly funny from start to finish, and I won't say any more because that would spoil it!
"The Straight Dope. The Inside Story of Sport's Biggest Drug Scandal" by Chip Le Grand. "City Limits: Why Australia’s cities are broken and how we can fix them" by Jane-Frances Kelly and Paul Donegan "25 Years of Whitt & Wisdom" by Noel Whittaker "The organized mind : thinking straight in the age of information overload" by Daniel J. Levitin. "The sovereign individual : mastering the transition to the information age" by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg.
When Breath Becomes Air Nothing to do with investment – everything to do with life. https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/1847923674/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481187595&sr=1-1&keywords=when+breath+becomes+air T
Scott Pape's new book The Barefoot Investor It covers everything from the cradle to the grave in one excellent book. In that sense it is correct when it portays itself as the "The only money book you'll ever need".
The most Important thing: Uncommon sense for the thoughtful investor - Howard Marks The book is more about psychology and ways of thinking about value portfolio management.
Retirement gives time for more reading! For those who wonder why some countries sustain wealth and others wallow in despair I thoroughly recommend Why Nations Fail by Economoglu and Robinson.For those who are interested in the historical shaping of global foreign policy,World Order by Henry Kissinger ,and for a terrific novel on how the Brits deceived Hitler about which part of the French coast the Allied Invasion would be centred on,I recommend The Best of Our Spies by Alex Gerlis
Chaos Monkey _ Obscene fourtune and random failure in Silicon Valley. Story of a failed PHD student who went from Goldman sachs to a small startup that sold to Twitter then onto facebook where he built agorithims for them. Very well written and interesting insight into silicon valley mindset and inside story of Facebook circa listing in 2013. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. Autobiography of founder of Nike. he oultines the early tears of Nike and how it almost went broke after failed japanese trade deals and product flops. Very interesting.
The great unwinding by George Packer
A high-profile dividend cut and a prominent fund manager’s apology have reignited a long-running debate. If investors can access similar exposures more cheaply and efficiently elsewhere, what exactly is keeping LICs alive?
The fight over testamentary trusts looked settled. Then the draft legislation arrived. Hidden in a technical detail is a question that could force many families to rethink wills they thought were already future-proof.
For generations, Australian investors have backed banks, miners and dividends. But has that loyalty come at a cost? A look at the numbers raises an uncomfortable question about where future returns will come from.
Investors have long accepted one portfolio rule without much question. A major tax shift could change that calculation entirely, forcing difficult trade-offs between risk, discipline and an overlooked cost lurking beneath.
The value of a testamentary trust is not determined by wealth alone. Depending on circumstances, it can reduce the tax burden on inherited income, create efficiencies and help build intergenerational wealth.
House prices are sliding across Australia, yet the most dangerous ingredient for a housing crash is still missing. If job losses surge amid growing economic risks, today's correction could become a historic property downturn.
From the maths of retirement, estimating spending and picking the right asset allocation to survive a poor decade, here are the questions every retiree – current or future – should be able to answer for themselves.
The US market looks eerily similar to the dot-com era with soaring AI spending and tech giants dominating returns. But one difference separates today’s boom from the dot-com bubble and it could determine what happens next.
Trusts are facing a shake-up, but an overhaul may not be necessary. Families can explore restructuring strategies that preserve succession and the asset protection benefits that have made these structures valuable.
War, inflation and higher rates were expected to derail America. But has the market got it wrong? Three forces are driving the economy beyond expectations, revealing implications for stock prices and portfolio positioning.
Everyone talks about diversifying assets. Far fewer think about diversifying trust. As inflation, debt and market assumptions collide, the question is whether portfolios need greater protection from unexpected outcomes.
Seven months into retirement, I'm still uncovering surprises. This month was spent reflecting on the slow pace of health change, the myth of neatly scheduled part-time work and the unexpected persistence of retirement guilt.
The next chapter of technology may not belong to the companies or business models many expect. As the landscape shifts, some opportunities are emerging in places that remain surprisingly overlooked by global markets.