← Back to home

Interests

Books

Reading is the best investment I have ever made. Admittedly, plenty of books never held me past the first burst of enthusiasm — abandoned halfway, or merely skimmed. But a few deserve to be read slowly, and read again. Those few, in their own way, shaped my values.

Charlie Munger was a foreigner who nonetheless carried the virtue and bearing of a traditional Chinese scholar-official. The first time I read his ideas, I knew at once that this was the kind of person I wanted to become. Sadly, by then he was already gone.

  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack

    Charlie Munger

    Where the latticework of mental models began — it rewards a fresh read every year.

  • Mungerism

    Charlie Munger

    His shareholder-meeting talks from 1987 to 2022 — the most complete first-hand record of how Munger thinks.

They say that people who never learn to handle money can hardly run their own lives well. But what does it actually mean to understand money? These primers are as good an answer as any. Some dismiss the Rich Dad series as clever marketing; others insist Graham is long out of date. I am not so sure.

  • Rich Dad Poor Dad

    Robert Kiyosaki

    Financial literacy 101: know assets from liabilities, and make money work for you.

  • Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant

    Robert Kiyosaki

    The ESBI quadrants: see where your income really comes from, then decide where you want to stand.

  • The Intelligent Investor

    Benjamin Graham

    The founding text of value investing: Mr. Market and the margin of safety.

Munger championed the “latticework of mental models”: actively learning and applying the thinking of many disciplines to understand the world and solve problems. Psychology is a crucial strand of that latticework.

  • Influence

    Robert B. Cialdini

    Reciprocity, commitment, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity — the six weapons of persuasion.

  • The Gaslight Effect

    Robin Stern

    Spotting covert emotional manipulation in relationships and at work — and stepping out of it.

Can you really learn to build a company from books? I doubt it. But a little methodology — and a map of the holes others have already fallen into — never hurts.

  • Crossing the Chasm

    Geoffrey A. Moore

    Between early adopters and the mainstream lies a chasm every new technology must cross.

  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things

    Ben Horowitz

    A CEO’s field manual for the dark moments no formula covers.

  • Blitzscaling

    Reid Hoffman

    Prioritizing speed over efficiency under uncertainty — the playbook of lightning-fast growth.

Podcast

I listen to a lot of podcasts — over 1,200 hours on Xiaoyuzhou as of July 20, 2026 — and every now and then I get the itch to record one myself. You are more than welcome to tune in.

Episode cover: An office worker’s LLM bill

An office worker’s LLM bill

2026-06-22 · in Chinese

On LLM bills, the illusion of efficiency, and whether we use our tools or are tamed by them.

0:00 / 59:27

Listen on Xiaoyuzhou ↗

Blog

Posts coming soon — stay tuned.