Snowball - Alice Schroeder

[Jurgis]

I fully support Alice Schroeder and everything she wrote in Snowball. Great book, great content.

[mbreject]

I personally don't think that anything in Snowball was below the belt. But if I were Warren, I probably wouldn't have been happy about the Graham and Astrid stuff. (The whole thing just made me feel really bad for Susan.) I think Schroeder started researching a little before Susan got sick, so it's very possible she got the information from Susan herself. If not, she probably could've gotten the info from Astrid, one of the kids or possibly even a neighbor/friend.

 

Also, some parts of the book made him seem a little immature. I forgot the instance, but I think there was a scenario where he told people to stop buying a certain company, because he hadn't finished getting all the shares he wanted yet.

 

eta: I think it made Benjamin Graham look bad as well. Even if Warren knew all about that stuff, I doubt he would want to be the reason for it to be out there.

[John Hjorth]

Right now, I'm about 2 thirds through the book.

 

Despite my comments earlier in this topic, I have come to like it a lot.

 

My reading method has lately been reading it chapter by chapter, from the beginning to the end, skipping those chapters that I have already read, while I started jumping around in the chapters, when I started on reading the book.

 

It's like getting dragged into it - like something getting dragged into a black hole - it's difficult to leave it again when you have started reading. I have been really tired a couple of days within the last two weeks, because I started continuing reading it late in the evening - and just kept on reading till the early morning, where the birds outside started singing - telling me that it's time to go to bed!

 

Personally, I find the chapters about the young Mr. Buffett in his partnership days exciting and fascinating - what a start on long track record!

[Kapitalust]

I recall Buffett saying he would never trust himself to write an honest autobiography, thus hiring Schroeder and giving her the golden keys to the kingdom. She explicitly had his permission to talk to any and everyone on all subject matters, a fact that even surprised a lot of long time friends and associates.

 

The personal aspects are the best things about the book, in my opinion; you can read about the financial stuff everywhere else.

 

I was intrigued by how much he loved his wife Susie but loved money more, and thus allocated his limited time to money and neglected Susie - thus leading to their drifting apart, with her singing career, moving to California, etc.

 

It was very tragic from what I gathered of how much they really did love each other.

[NoCalledStrikes]

Snowball is a great book for Buffettologists.  People who think that Alice Schroeder was unfair, should only imagine what the book would be like if it were written by Michael Lewis. My understanding from my source is that Warren was perfectly happy with the book until his family read it. 

 

Warren is a good person and a great businessman, but he is not without flaws or foibles.  Every year at the AGM he says that money does not buy happiness and what he really wants is to be loved by the people you want to be loved by and that it can't be done with money.  You have to be lovable to be loved.  Because of Snowball, now when I hear him say it, I know he's sharing knowledge he's learned the hard way and it makes it stick deeper into my psyche.