Hm. I think this may be my own fault for picking up the wrong books. I looked again at the Foolish recommended reading list:

http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=14901092

Neither of these was on it.

Well, there's a good reason for that - the recommended reading post was put together in 2001. The books you referred to were copyrighted in 2004 & 2005. :-)

You may find similar issues with books on the list because of where you are in your financial life, but as long as you're checking them out from the library, it's only costing you time.

Here's an idea on how to waste less time on non-useful financial books: If you can find one or two new good ideas to implement in the first 50 pages of a book, it's probably worth continuing to read. If, by the time you're 50 pages in, and you haven't found anything new that you can use, and you aren't enjoying the read, don't finish it. You may need to tweak the parameters for yourself.

AJ