New Library Account
I figured that since I have been living in Seattle long enough it was about time that I got a membership through the Seattle Public Library. Seattle recently built a brand new library for downtown. From the outside it has this totally random shape made out of steel and glass. It really is more of a work of art than an actual building. Inside there are 9-10 different levels. The first 5 levels have a lot of seating and computer areas, as well as a lot of fiction novels. The remaining floors are the non-fiction. These floors spiral on an incline around the northern half of the building. It is a pretty clever idea, but the library can be a bit confusing to navigate. The following picture is what the Seattle Public Library looks like. You can find a nice little review of the library, as well as some other cool pictures here.
Anyway, I set up my account during my lunch break and set out to explore the library. I decided to go check out the books they had in the business/investing section. Those are in the 330’s in the dewey decimal system for those keeping track at home. Originally I wanted to join the library because I didn’t feel like paying $27 + tax for the Turtletrader book at Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately it is already checked out, but I am next in line for it.
It took me awhile to find the right section. I knew that I wanted to be in the 330’s, because it seemed like every other finance book started with 33x as well. I naturally assumed that the 3xx section would be on the third floor. Turns out I was wrong, and the third floor just had fiction books. I found a map that showed that the section that I needed to be in was actually on the 7th floor.
Once I finally found my section, I realized that I needed to find something fairly quickly if I were to be able to check it out and get back to work with enough time to eat some lunch as well. The library actually has a pretty decent selection of finance titles, and after a bit of searching I came along a couple that looked like winners.
The first book is called The EDGAR Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Becoming a Savvy Investor. The book was written in 2004 by Tom Taulli, an EDGAR Online analyst. The book looks like it shows how to decipher the typical financial statement that is on the EDGAR website and how to make the most of it. For those of you who don’t know, EDGAR Online is a website run by the SEC which lists all of the financial releases of publicly traded companies.
The second book that I checked out is called How Technical Analysis Works by Bruce M. Kamich. After flipping through this book, it looks like it gives a nice overview of many of the different chart reading techniques. This should be an interesting read.
I have to return these books by March 24th, so hopefully that will give me enough time to take a decent look through them and possibly write a little review about each of them.
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