Through the series Bookmark, leading voices in the world of finance and business talk about the books that influenced them in their professional journey, and in some cases, also touched them at a personal level.

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In this episode, S Naren, ED & CIO, ICICI Prudential MF, shares the list of the books that have had a big influence on his life.

The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor, by Howard Marks

In this book, Howard Marks, Chairman and Co-Founder of Oaktree Capital Management, describes his investment process. He stresses the need and benefits of being counter-intuitive and the importance of developing second-order thinking, as a means to outdo the competition. The other aspect the book talks about is the concept of market cycles across various sectors—a factor which is most dependable in the world of investing.

The Little Book on Value Investing, by James Montier

As the title of the book suggests, the text here helps a reader recognise various behavioral biases that tend to fog an investors’ minds. Some of the traits discussed here are self-attribution bias, confirmatory biases, overconfidence, and empathy gap. As a means to catch oneself from falling into any of these traps, the book recommends the importance of maintaining an investment diary as a means to overcoming these biases.

The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande

Unlike the earlier mentioned books, this is not an investment-oriented one. Here, the author, an American surgeon, and public health researcher details how a checklist approach to complex activities will help you avoid mistakes which could have serious consequences otherwise. The author lays out the dos and don’ts such that the checklist once made will be helpful to whoever decides to follow it. One of the key aspects when going through the preparation is to ensure that the checklist made is short, clear, and focused on the essentials. To conclude, the book highlights through various examples, how checklists seemingly enable to defend the user, even the experienced, against failure across a variety of tasks.

The Manual of Ideas: The Proven Framework for Finding the Best Value Investments, by John Mihaljevic

This book can be considered as a must-read for beginners who are looking forward to exploring the world of value investing. Over 300-odd pages, the book takes the reader through nine different styles of value investing. It details how they are used, why they work, how one can screen for stocks under different styles and what type of questions does the newbie investor needs to ask during the stock selection process.

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen

The author Clayton Christensen is a Harvard Business School Professor and is considered among the world's most influential business thinkers. Through this book, he highlights the importance of working with a purpose. What is often missed out is that human life, in the context of society, is short. So, working with a purpose makes much more sense. He forces the reader to reflect on one's value system, relationships and work engaged in. The book draws various theories and examples from the world of business to present the parallels in our everyday life, families and career.

(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)