Goodreads
Category: Books Profile: goodreads.com/user/show/145945-jack Last updated: 2026-04-06
A complete log of books Jack has read, sourced from his Goodreads “Read” shelf. Sorted by date updated (most recent first). Ratings are out of 5 stars.
Read Shelf
| Title | Author | Rating | Date Read | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Mathematics of Poker | Bill Chen | 4/5 | — | — |
| Agents in the Long Game of AI: Computational Cognitive Modeling | Marjorie McShane | 5/5 | — | — |
| The Unfair Advantage | Ash Ali & Hasan Kubba | 3/5 | — | — |
| Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be | Frank Bruni | 5/5 | Jan 2022 | “One of the most important books I’ve read in the 2022 era. You are who you believe who you are.” |
| Principles of Building AI Agents | Sam Bhagwat | 2/5 | Jan 2024 | “Free book I got at a hackathon. Good introductory materials on agents, though it’s not the most well-written.” |
| Frankenstein: The 1818 Text | Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley | 3/5 | Sep 2022 | “Great book, nothing particularly memorable.” |
| Classroom of the Elite (Light Novel) Vol. 1 | Syougo Kinugasa | 4/5 | Jan 2023 | Plans to add the full series (~20 volumes) to his Goodreads shelf |
| The Recruit (Cherub #1) | Robert Muchamore | — | — | — |
| The Hard Thing About Hard Things | Ben Horowitz | 5/5 | — | “I can physically feel the tension that Ben Horowitz has felt when he is building a startup through this book.” |
| Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow | Yuval Noah Harari | 3/5 | — | “Controversial take — the ideas are great, but I just did not find the interest to continue reading.” |
| Zero to One | Peter Thiel | 4/5 | Jul 2025 | “A very fascinating book about how to build startups from the ground up. I have applied a lot of the ideas in my own thought process in building startups.” |
| 50 Political Ideas You Really Need to Know | Ben Dupré | 3/5 | — | “A good foundational overview of different political ideas. Felt more like an encyclopedia with facts rather than anything too engaging.” |
| Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less | Greg McKeown | 4/5 | Dec 2025–Feb 2026 | “Far too many people are focused on additive activities, trying to do as much as possible. This book is about being able to prioritize.” |
| How to Win Friends and Influence People | Dale Carnegie | 5/5 | Jan 2023 | “A foundational piece of work that I’ve still used as advice to this day, even though I’ve read it a few years ago.” |
| Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence | Max Tegmark | 4/5 | — | “A great high-level overview of the application and emergence of AI by an MIT expert grappling with the idea of being human in artificial intelligence.” |
| The Three Body Problem | Liu Cixin | 5/5 | Sep–Oct 2024 | “One of the best book series I’ve read in recent time, ever since the Netflix show came out. I highly, highly recommend.” |
| The Courage to Be Disliked | Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga | 4/5 | Apr–Nov 2025 | “A phenomenal piece of work that takes the unique format of a conversation between a lost guy and a philosopher.” |
| The Real Truth About Success | Garrison Wynn | 3/5 | — | — |
| The Dark Forest (Three-Body Problem #2) | Liu Cixin | 5/5 | — | — |
| The Redemption of Time (Three-Body spinoff) | Baoshu | 3/5 | — | — |
| Death’s End (Three-Body Problem #3) | Cixin Liu | 5/5 | — | — |
Patterns
Five-star books: Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, Agents in the Long Game of AI, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, Death’s End
The Three-Body Problem trilogy dominates the list — all three main books rated 5 stars. Read Sep–Oct 2024, sparked by the Netflix adaptation. The spinoff (Redemption of Time by Baoshu) rated lower at 3 stars.
Non-fiction skew: Heavy on business/startup (Zero to One, Hard Thing, Essentialism, Unfair Advantage), AI/tech (Life 3.0, Agents in the Long Game, Principles of Building AI Agents), and philosophy (Courage to Be Disliked, How to Win Friends).
Classroom of the Elite is the only light novel series — Jack notes he plans to add ~20 volumes but hasn’t because it would dominate the shelf.
Five-Star Reviews
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
“I can physically feel the tension that Ben Horowitz has felt when he is building a startup through this book.”
How to Win Friends and Influence People
“A foundational piece of work that I’ve still used as advice to this day, even though I’ve read it a few years ago. A lot of the ideas about human relationships still apply.”
Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be
“One of the most important books I’ve read in the 2022 era. You are who you believe who you are.”
The Three-Body Problem
“One of the best book series I’ve read in recent time, ever since the Netflix show has come out. I highly, highly recommend anyone who wants to read this series.”
Related
Harry Potter Series (J.K. Rowling)
Jack has read at least 4 of the 7 Harry Potter books, all tracked in his Notion media database:
| Book | Rating |
|---|---|
| Philosopher’s Stone | — |
| Chamber of Secrets | 4/5 |
| Prisoner of Azkaban | 5/5 |
| Goblet of Fire | 5/5 |
| Order of the Phoenix | 4/5 |
Classroom of the Elite (Full Series)
Jack has read the entire Classroom of the Elite light novel series by Syougo Kinugasa — one of the most ambitious reading commitments in his log. Year 1 Volumes 1–11.5 and Year 2 Volumes 1–8 are all marked Finished (100% progress). Year 2 Vol. 8 and 8.5 are not yet started.
Year 1: Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.5, 5, 6, 7, 7.5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 11.5 — all complete Year 2: Vol. 1–7 complete, Vol. 7.5–8.5 not started yet
Currently Reading / Paused
| Title | Author | Status | Progress |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Art of Strategy | Dixit & Nalebuff | In progress | — |
| Elements of Programming Interviews (Python) | Aziz, Lee, Prakash | In progress | — |
| Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar | Edwin Pulleyblank | In progress | — |
| 34 Stories of Philosophy | — | In progress | 55% |
| Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** | Mark Manson | In progress | 60% |
| Men’s Guide to Women | — | In progress | 60% |
| How to Do AI Research at MIT | MIT AI Lab | In progress | 70% |
| Models | Mark Manson | In progress | 34% |
| Deep Learning Illustrated | Jon Krohn | In progress | 30% |
| Life 3.0 | Max Tegmark | In progress | 30% |
| System Design Interview | Alex Xu | In progress | 30% |
| The Unfair Advantage | Ash Ali | In progress | 30% |
| Future is Faster Than You Think | Peter H. Diamandis | In progress | 40% |
| 100 Page Machine Learning Book | Andriy Burkov | In progress | 35% |
| Finish What You Start | Peter Hollins | In progress | 45% |
| 7 Habits of Highly Effective People | Stephen Covey | Paused | 15% |
| 48 Laws of Power | Robert Greene | Paused | 10% |
Additional Completed Books (from jack-luo.com/special/books)
| Title | Author | Genre | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brigands M.C. | Robert Muchamore | Fiction | 5/5 |
| Shadow Wave | Robert Muchamore | Fiction | 5/5 |
| The Killing | Robert Muchamore | Fiction | 5/5 |
| The Dark Forest | Cixin Liu | SciFi | 5/5 |
| Death’s End | Cixin Liu | SciFi | 5/5 |
| Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be | Frank Bruni | College | 5/5 |
| The Redemption of Time | Cixin Liu | SciFi | 3/5 |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | SciFi | 4/5 |
| Zero to One | Peter Thiel | Entrepreneurship | 4/5 |
| Your Name | Makoto Shinkai | SciFi | 4/5 |
Want to Read
- The Power of Now — Eckhart Tolle
- Diary of a CEO (podcast, not book)
- Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships — Temple Grandin
Revision history
| Date | Commit | Edit summary |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-06 06:55:10 | 70ce2406 | build: auto-update 2026-04-06 06:55 UTC (113 pages) |
| 2026-04-06 06:43:54 | 5ebe9165 | build: auto-update 2026-04-06 06:43 UTC (112 pages) |
| 2026-04-06 06:20:28 | 3eb80294 | build: auto-update 2026-04-06 06:20 UTC (100 pages) |
| 2026-04-06 06:07:09 | 2ce09073 | build: auto-update 2026-04-06 06:07 UTC (97 pages) |
| 2026-04-06 05:50:23 | ecf6b6c5 | build: auto-update 2026-04-06 05:50 UTC (83 pages) |
| 2026-04-06 05:39:12 | 75913391 | build: auto-update 2026-04-06 05:39 UTC (78 pages) |