Reading is a great passion of mine, and I spend nights reading (or doing a crossword). I generally make a trip to BMV, or browse on Amazon, every week or two to sink my teeth in an Agatha Christie mystery, an economics book or a historical account on World War II.

I don’t know for sure, but I have probably read about 35 books this year.

Here are my 10 favourite works of fiction that I have read this year (in no particular order):

“Pnin” – Vladimir Nabokov

“Invitation to a Beheading” – Vladimir Nabokov

“Red Harvest” – Raymond Chandler

“Nightmare Town” – Dashiell Hammett

“The Portrait of a Lady” – Henry James

“The Maltese Falcon” – Dashiell Hammett

“The Secret Adversary”  – Agatha Christie

“The Clocks” – Agatha Christie

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” – Agatha Christie

“Animal Farm” – George Orwell

Honourable Mentions:

“Peril at End House” – Agatha Christie

“Hound of Baskervilles” – Arthur Conan Doyle

“Lord Edgware Dies” – Agatha Christie

“Sign of Four” – Arthur Conan Doyle

“Ghosts” – Henrik Ibsen

If you are interested in content related to entrepreneurship, business finance and other intricate matters then I would suggest checking out Starting Business.

You can find an array of insightful and interesting articles.

So far, I have published two articles:

“The Main Benefits of Online Banking”

“The Advantage of Prepaid Cards”

Another article of mine about private placement life insurance will be published this weekend.

My life consists of just this: reading and writing.

I spend my entire day writing with classical or jazz music resting in the background. I spend my entire evening reading with classical or jazz music resting in the background.

As the years have gone by, many clients and acquaintances have asked me which authors have influenced my life, my career and my writing. What I love about this question is the fact that my influences and my favourites continually change as I keep discovering new writers, or the fact that my tastes have changed. (Despite my love of film noir, I likely wouldn’t be caught perusing 1920s or 1930s crime noir when I was 20.)

If you asked me who my all-time favourite author was during my teen years then I would without hesitation respond with Fyodor Dostoevsky or Francois Voltaire. Although I still admire these compelling and talented writers, I have turned to others for pleasure, entertainment, motivation and learning.

For those who have often wondered who my favourite authors are, here you go. These are my 10 favourite writers (in no particular order; I do not care about their personal lives):

• Agatha Christie
• Anton Chekhov
• Honore de Balzac
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Raymond Chandler
• Dashiell Hammett
• Woody Allen
• Henrik Ibsen
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Honourable mentions:

• Nikolai Gogol
• Leo Tolstoy
• Henry James
• H.G. Wells
• Franz Kafka

Perhaps this list will change in the next five, 10 or 15 years. Until then, these are the fictional writers that I admire, look up to and strive to be like. Without them, I don’t know where I’d be.

Over at Economic Collapse News, I have provided my opinion on how the mainstream media have covered the 2016 United States presidential election. So far, I give them a D-, but I go into more detail.

Here is an excerpt:

The 2016 United States presidential election has probably been the most interesting election cycle since the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was making plenty of hilarious jokes. The 2016 presidential election is pitting one corrupt, lying, crony statist (Hillary Clinton) against a constant, hour-by-hour flip flopper (Donald Trump). You also have potentially a third-party candidate making the debate stage this month.

It has indeed been an interesting election year. But perhaps the most compelling part of the 2016 campaign are the mainstream and alternative media outlets. The paucity of consistency, the blatant hypocrisy and obvious partisanship are taking over the campaign trails. Ostensibly, television networks and journalists favor Clinton, while the mainstream media admonish Trump because of supposed racism and bigotry rather than his inane policies.

The media’s lack of objectivity has never been so prevalent than this year.

You can read more here.