McSweeney's 41

McSweeney's 41 is a collection of short stories, short non-fiction, and some work by Australian Aboriginal writers. I was worried that this would be uneven, but that's not the case at all -- everything in here is top notch.

The first story in here is a Thomas McGuane account of a fishing camp in the wilderness, with two former best friends who are well on their way to becoming estranged. It's depressing and darkly funny.

McGuane is the only author here I was previously familiar with (although I do recall seeing review for the novel excerpted here, John Brandon's A Million Heavens), but everything here is polished.

Other stories I'd single out for praise are Aimee Bender's "Wordkeepers", Jess Walter's "The Wolf and the Wild,", and Ryan Boudinot's "Robot Sex."

The non-fiction ("A Land Rush in Iran" and "What Happens After Sixteen Years in Prison?") are both well done, if a little meandering.

Finally, the four short stories from Australian Aboriginal writers (Tony Birch's "The Promise, Ellen van Neerven-Currie's "S&J", Tara June Winch's "It's Too Difficult to Explain" and Melissa Lucashenko's "Tonsils") are more than worth additions to this collection -- they're as good or better as anything that came before them in this work.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

There's a lot of information in A Random Walk Down Wall Street, but all that information really boils down to "no investment strategy can reliably beat the S&P 500 index over a long period of time." Malkiel provides numerous examples of this, over a time period ending in 1998. (It's too bad that either there isn't an updated edition through the most recent financial crisis, or the edition I have is older.)

Of course, that's not all that's in this book -- there's a history of some famous financial bubbles (Dutch tulips, British East India Company, the US Stock Market in 1929), and a general primer on the various investment vehicles and financial instruments available. The author also includes contact information for various investment houses, which would be much more useful if this book wasn't fifteen years old.

This seems to be a useful primer on the stock market and investing. I don't really know enough about the subject to recommend it unreservedly, but it seems to be worth paging through for a general understanding of the issues.