Pssssst! Wanna look at the hottest read in town? Then snap up a copy of . . . the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. annual report. While the title suggests a pastiche of dry statistics and commercial puffery, connoisseurs of corporate entertainment eagerly await each year's version -- particularly the plain- spoken chairman's letter, written by superinvestor Warren Buffett. In the Omaha-based holding company's 1990 edition, released last month, the author quotes such thinkers as Woody Allen, Bertrand Russell and Buffett's four-year- old granddaughter Emily, while characteristically mocking his own financial acumen.
"Your Chairman displayed exquisite timing," he writes about his purchase of...