bookshelf

I read broadly — biology, physics, history, philosophy, economics, and fiction — usually in Chinese first, then hunting down the English original when the ideas won't leave me alone. The list below represents books that shaped how I think, not just what I know.

A recurring theme: complexity arising from simple rules. Whether it's natural selection assembling organisms from chemistry, markets coordinating millions of decisions without a controller, or neural networks learning representations no human explicitly designed — the universe seems deeply allergic to top-down design. These books, across very different fields, keep pointing at the same underlying truth.

Star ratings reflect how much a book changed my thinking, not just how well it was written. A three-star book can be beautifully written and only modestly mind-expanding; a five-star book rearranges the furniture.