I looked at an actuarial textbook once, and almost all the material seemed so specialized that I don't see why anyone would recommend learning it unless they were actually going to be doing actuarial stuff.
A popular actuarial textbook like "Actuarial Mathematics" is extremely specialized (especially to life insurance) and would only relate to the 3rd exam (MLC) and beyond. However, the first two exams are much more generic to statistics and finance respectively.
