2008: What should a 12 year old read?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hey. I’m Jack Range (PH). I’m from Philadelphia. I’m in seventh grade, and I’m 12-years-old.

I just wanted to ask, what kind of things should I be reading, like, in my grade? ’Cause I know there are a lot of things that they don’t teach you in school that you should know, but what things should I be looking into? (Applause.)

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I would get in the habit, if you don’t have it already — but you sound like you very well may — of reading a daily newspaper, which is not the most popular thing in the world among younger people these days.

But you want to learn as much as you can about the world around you. And Bill Gates, I think, quit at the letter P in the World Book. Doesn’t seem to have hurt him too much to quit there.

But you can have a set of World Books. You can read the newspapers. You should just sop it up. And you’ll find out what’s the most interesting to you.

I mean, you know, there’s a certain point where the sports pages were most interesting to me, then the finance pages. I happen to be a political junkie. But you just can’t learn enough in life.

And I think the fact — what you’ll find is the more you learn, the more you want to learn. I mean, it is fun, and — but you sound to me like a young person that’s going to do a lot of that on their own.

Do you have any suggestions, Charlie? You’d probably suggest reading Ben Franklin.

CHARLIE MUNGER: My suggestion would be that the young person that just spoke has already figured out how to succeed in life. You’ve got it made. (Applause)