Collection: Mohnish Pabrai - #42 'Books Recommendation and Readings'
[Transcript]
MOHNISH PABRAI 00:08
Yeah, let me just take a few recent ones.
There is a book that just came out recently, it's called 'The Frackers.' And I think it's a New York Times columnist, Gregory Zuckerman I think is the author.
And you know, it's basically [Inaudible] industry those have some very significant transformational impacts for decades for the United States and probably for the countries in the world as well.
So I think it's just a good book to understand and it's playing out in front of us, you know, in a sense that just as recently as 5 or 6 years back. You know, almost everyone was very concerned about becoming any energy independent and use dependencies on Middle Eastern Oil and all of that.
And I think the United States is well on its way to – basically, fairly quickly becoming a net exporter of energy, so that's important development.
There is another book which is that are completely unrelated, [Inaudible] which I like a lot, it's called 'Give and Take.' And I think the name of the author is Adam Grant, I think that's what his name is.
And that's interesting book, you know, he divided the world into three types of people, people who are givers, who are takers and who are matchers. You know, matchers are the people if I do something for you or you do something for me, I'll do something somewhat similar to you.
And he just shows the kind of the amazing returns, the giver's camp, people who are doing all sort of things for all kind of people without trying to keep score.
And I think that's another great book. So these are some books that I enjoyed recently and there might be some other – I'll think about some others that you might find interesting. Yeah, you know actually I don't read – people think I read a lot, I don't really read that much.
Sometimes, when I find a book that's really interesting, I like to pound through it. I would guess that I'm probably reading, I don't know 50-60 books a year. My guess is a book a week, it's my guess.
And one of the things I do is I don't hesitate to abandon books. Most books could be summarized into 5 pages. And I'm deeply disappointed at these authors don't do that. And so you know, many times you're going to the book when you're trying to find nuggets and you know, If I'm pounding pages when I can't really try to figure out where the nugget is, I might give up.
You know, and because there is an opportunity cost. And then you know, I have close friends who will never ever abandon a book till its finished. No matter, you know, how useless it is and so you have people you know, [Inaudible] spectrum on that front.
But my take is that you know, if it's not somehow, you know, grabbing me or delivering value in the first 40-50 pages and continues to do that. Then it's probably going to induce me.
Yeah, I basically just clone that from Warren and Charlie. So, you know, and I – it's a subset of what they do so I think they will be a better reference for you.
But I subscribe to 3 newspapers – daily newspaper; New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. So I read those three newspapers everyday then I subscribe to a bunch of magazines, you know, there are like Forbes, Fortune, Business Week and The Economist for examples, so these are like 4 magazines that are showing up.
Then we have subscriptions like the Manual of Ideas and I have a subscription to Outstanding Investor Digest but I haven't seen an issue in, I don't know, how many years so I think it has been a couple years since I saw an issue but I would love to read that when that shows up.
Yeah, then beyond that there is the books that I'm reading and then you know, the investment research that is coming up and such. So that's I think that's much, much of the [Inaudible] in that sphere.
(Source: https://youtu.be/ot6pzc9ZwfU)
