My Library

Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Jamshedji Tata and so on. Take a bunch of famous, highly successful names from any time in history and you’ll find one thing common between almost all of them – They all read a lot!

Taking advantage of this obvious secret, I try to read as many books (high-quality ones) as possible and become a better investor, businessman, student and person.

Here’s a list of all the books that I’ve read and I think are a must-read for you if you’re interested in that category. You can find the complete list of the books that I’ve read on Goodreads.

My List of Must-Read Books

The Psychology of Money

In the practical world, finance is less about mathematical equations and rational decision-making and more about emotions, attitudes and reasonableness of the decisions in our minds.

This book gives a masterclass on how psychology plays a big role in our money management and was gifted to me by my CFA Level II Exam teacher because the value given in this book is unparalleled by even professional finance degrees.

The Intelligent Investor

This book built my foundation as an investor.

A rational investment decision is one where you get a lot of value for money, you pay less than what it’s worth. You get a bargain.

In other words, Value Investing is the only type of investing there is (the difference lies in where the value is in a particular investment).

And no other book comes even close to this one on that topic.

Common Stock and Uncommon Profits

I had read a lot about value investing before I read this book and although I knew the basic concept of growth investing, i.e., buying high-growth companies, I didn’t fully understand the intricacies of it.

This book changed how I invested and gave me some of the core concepts to shape my investing style.

One Up On Wall Street

This is the first book I read which attempts to blend both value investing and growth investing. Peter Lynch knew how to succeed at both. Also, he talks about topics like cyclical investments and touches upon a crucial point for today’s investors – futures and options.

Written in simple language, this book also questions the readers about their nature to evaluate whether they are fit to be equity investors.

A Short History of Financial Euphoria

It is an amazing book that summarises all the major financial bubbles since the Tulip Mania and analyses their common points in simple language.

The Big Bull of Dalal Street

Much of what is written in the book is available on YouTube.

However, this book serves as a good compilation of all the interviews given by Mr Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and gives a comprehensive picture. Also, there are insights about the type of person and investor that he was from people who knew him well.

If you want to learn how to balance investing and trading, then you must read about the most legendary investor-cum-trader of all time.

The Lean Startup

If you’re building a startup and you need a roadmap for it, this is the book to read.

This is the book which gave concepts like MVP and Pivot which are sure to be a part of your vocabulary if you’re in the startup space.

There’s one concept I’d heard over and over again, it’s not the idea but the execution that matters. This book will teach you how to do it.

Hooked

Why do I always find myself scrolling through LinkedIn or Insta or surfing on YouTube or checking my email? Is something wrong with me or am I possessed?

Companies make such addictive products by tapping into our psychology and this book will show you how you can also create a habit-forming product for your users.

The $100 Startup

Not all startups are high tech and not all of them require millions of dollars in funding. There are so many businesses which can be started with just $100 or so and can make you a decent to fantastic living.

This is the odd one out of all the books on startups and, although the chronology could be better, this book will show you how to look at startups in a completely different manner.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

No matter what educational background you have or whatever your profession is, this book is a must-read!

This is a masterpiece on decoding decision-making that touches upon all walks of life, from marketing, investing and economics to court cases and even happiness.

Although it is a very long book, every chapter of this book is a gem.

Show Your Work

Are you thinking of creating content but afraid to do so?

Or maybe you’re not considering creating content and feel “why should I”?

Then this book is perfect for you. And not only you but even those who’ve already started making content.

This book tells you why you should also create content, how to get started with it, what’s to be shared and what’s not to be.

Steal Like an Artist

“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” – Picasso.

This book gives a fascinating outlook on how everything we see that’s new, a new movie, a song or a quote, is just a derivation of something old.

However, this doesn’t mean that you can just plagiarise someone’s work. There’s a difference between taking inspiration and copying. There’s a difference in ethics, in giving credit and in creating something new.

Harry Potter Series

It was Harry Potter books that got me interested in reading as a teenager. If not for these books, I would not have read even half the number of books I’ve read so far.

These are by far the best set of fiction books I’ve ever read.

What’s the big deal about books?

When you watch a reel or shorts on YouTube or Instagram, you get some information with entertainment in less than 60 seconds. Or maybe you watch some posts on LinkedIn or Twitter and gain some knowledge from them. Here’s an example of a quote you might come across:

A side profile of a woman in a russet-coloured turtleneck and white bag. She looks up with her eyes closed.

“I don’t want a lot of good investments; I want a few outstanding ones. If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is almost never.”

– Philip A. Fisher, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits

These short format contents are good for a dopamine hit, some entertainment and a pinch of knowledge. However, these are not enough to provide in-depth knowledge on any topic. These are more focused on grabbing your short attention span than providing you with any meaningful information. You can’t understand all the value given in this quote unless you know the whole background and context unless you’ve read the book.

But what about long-form YouTube videos? These have in-depth information, right?

YouTube long-form videos provide information in much more detail as compared to short-form videos. However, these videos are again geared towards grabbing your attention and retaining it for as long as possible. That’s because YouTube viewers have an itchy finger and they like to skip ahead or click on the next tempting video. I know this because I make long-form YouTube videos as well.

Well, what about movies? These are very long and people usually don’t skip too much right?

I’ve read all the books of Harry Potter and I’ve seen all the movies as well. For parts 1-5, I watched the movie first and then read the book. For the last two parts, I read the book first and then watched the movie. In all the cases, books were a lot better. You get a lot of information in the book whereas many scenes have to be cut short or removed in the movie for fitting the story within the given time frame.

PS: It was Harry Potter books that got me interested in reading as a teenager. If not for these books, I would not have read even half the number of books I’ve read so far.

How I started reading more

While Harry Potter got me interested in reading, it is not easy to find time or energy to read books. Most of us are instead glued to our phones in our free time.

As I tried to figure out how to read more books, I watched a video of Ali Abdal where he shared his tips for reading more books. His video was extremely helpful and the tips which stood out for me and worked very well for me are as follows:

Listen to audiobooks.

This was much needed for me because of the following reasons:

  1. It is a lot easier for me to listen to books rather than taking out of time to read them. I can listen to them while walking, jogging or doing anything other activity.
  2. I’m a very slow reader and when I read books, I tend to drift off in my imagination. Audiobooks keep me on track and help me finish books faster. And if I need to listen to anything again, I can go back a few seconds as I do in any YouTube video.

Audibles is the most popular app for audiobooks across the world and has been one of the best investments I’ve made in myself. You can listen to your books from any device, listen to them at any speed, and once you purchase a book, you can listen to it forever, even after you’ve cancelled your monthly subscription.

The monthly subscription of INR 199 gives you a credit every month with which you can buy any book you want. This way, I’m able to get many expensive books at a big discount and I’m pushed to finish the old books so that I can start listening to the new ones.

You can click here to start your 1-Month FREE TRIAL of Audibles.

Note: Since I read a lot of non-fiction books and would like to revisit what I listened to, I make notes for all the important points from the audiobook in my notes app from time to time. You should do that as well if you’re listening to value-packed books like Hooked or The Lean Startup.

You don’t need to finish every book.

When you open a YouTube video or start a new show on an OTT platform, or when you read an article somewhere, you don’t hesitate to leave the video or the blog in between. You start watching or reading because the title and thumbnail looked interesting, but if the content doesn’t live up to the expectations then you don’t hesitate to skip around or watch faster or quit in between, right?

But when it comes to books, our psychology changes. We feel like we have to finish what we started and until we finish the current book, we can’t move on to the next one.

Books are jam-packed with information and that’s great. But not all books are well written, and not all books are worth reading.

Since I’ve started following this new approach, I’ve kept aside books that I don’t want to read in favour of the ones that I want to read at the moment and then came back to them later to finish them. I also sped ahead a lot of the repetitive pages of a book which was stretched too long and was finally able to finish it.

Create a Goodreads Account.

Creating an account on Goodreads and mentioning all the books that you’ve read provides a way to flex your knowledge and share your reviews of the books that you’ve read. This pushes me to finish the books that I’ve started so that I can add them to the list of books that I’ve read.

Here’s the link to my Goodreads profile where you can find the complete list of all the books I’ve read (and remembered to track them).

These were all the tips I found extremely useful from that video by Ali Abdaal. You can watch his entire video here and get more tips on how to read more books.