Every Page You Turn Is Shaping a Brand-New You | 5Y New Year Reading List
How to start a new year.
As 2024 draws to a close, looking back on the past year, the outside world remains as noisy and chaotic as ever. In an uncertain environment, books offer us a unique and precious lens through which to see the world and ourselves. Books are not just vessels of knowledge, but also our most patient companions, giving us space for thought and reflection.
The following reading list comes from recommendations by our colleagues at 5Y Capital. The selection is fairly diverse and represents only a portion of what our team enjoys reading. These books don't contain answers about the future, but they may offer some useful perspective — and perhaps a bit of reading pleasure.
Wishing you a happy new year.
(Listed alphabetically by title)
- 1 -
Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip
Author: Jim Rogers
Recommended by: Yunfeng Shi
I was wearing my electric vest, gripping heated handlebars, trying to dry myself out as fast as possible. My stereo was blasting — first Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again," then Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik in G major. We encountered yet another spectacular Siberian light show, lightning dancing on the left, while on the right the sunset produced colors I'd never seen before.
A gold mine can be a literal gold mine, a Wall Street boom, an oil well in Texas, the tourism industry in Xi'an, or the accumulation of hard currency. Wherever hardworking people discover gold, they will throw themselves toward it without hesitation.
- 2 -
The Buffett & Munger Saga: Replicable Value Investing
Author: Tang Chao
Recommended by: Yaopeng Xing
Good investment methods and life philosophies are both simple and unadorned.
- 3 -
For Blood and Money
Author: Nathan Vardi
Recommended by: Yaqiong Chen
This book chronicles the legendary birth of Ibrutinib, a star drug in hematologic oncology — a story where science and capital, human nature and vested interests, are inextricably intertwined. How far can humanity go on the long road to conquering disease? Curiosity and dreams set us on the journey; capital and self-interest drive us further; yet in the end, only conviction and a sense of mission can carry us to the destination.
Here's to every entrepreneur persevering through the winter. "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
- 4 -
Restructuring and Breakthrough
Author: Huang Qifan
Recommended by: Mengchen Liu
"'Restructuring' means, at its core, standing at the heights of history and strategy, applying your intellect, grasping the main thread of the problem, and rearranging the constituent elements of a thing to form the optimal solution."
- 5 -
Investing for Growth: How to make money by only buying the best companies in the world
Author: Terry Smith
Recommended by: Mengqi Ji
If you have ten years or more, how do you make money by only buying stocks in good companies? Building on a foundation of value investing faith, the author offers some more practical advice — on understanding the relationship between valuation and business quality, the trade-off between diversification and concentration, whether heavy buybacks are friend or foe, and more.
- 6 -
Thirteen Days in September
Author: Lawrence Wright
Recommended by: Jing Li
Rich in historical detail with a clear narrative thread, the book vividly portrays the tense thirteen days of negotiations — moments of near-collapse followed by dramatic reversals. The use of flashbacks and interwoven timelines is pitch-perfect, grounding each figure's decisions in their personal history. It reveals the political maneuvering behind the scenes and the flashes of human greatness. History repeats itself; peace requires courage and wisdom.
- 7 -
Les Schwab Pride in Performance: Keep it going
Author: Les Schwab
Recommended by: Addie
Les Schwab built a retail empire starting from one unremarkable little shop — winning customers through personal tire delivery and showing up in snowstorms. Charlie Munger recommended this book as a classic case study in what drives extreme success, describing Schwab as "a talented business genius, a fanatic, who got many things right and maintained his trajectory through clever systems." Packed with business wisdom and practical insights, reading it feels like a conversation with the founder himself — absolutely worth devouring in one sitting!
- 8 -
The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
Author: Max Chafkin
Recommended by: Yunfeng Shi
LLMs have atomized and deconstructed every piece of text on the internet. In this context, the value of telling a good story has been massively amplified.
Peter Thiel always wears that contemplative expression, drawing you into his worldview before suddenly lobbing an insight you never saw coming — and it lights up your mind.
- 9 -
Escaping the Bubble: A Brief History of Technological Progress and Tech Investing
Author: Alasdair Nairn
Recommended by: Ye Yuan
This book reveals the uncertainty inherent in technological innovation. In the waves of technological development, the losers clinging to old technologies are often easy to identify, but recognizing the new winners is fraught with difficulty. For entrepreneurs, patience and sustained competition are the only path forward — opportunity and resilience coexist, and growth is never smooth sailing. "No mud, no lotus."
- 10 -
The Deal of the Century: The Breakup of AT&T
Author: Steve Coll
Recommended by: Yin Yin
Opening up the history of the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust battles with American tech giants, it's neither long nor short — one breakup succeeded, one ended in settlement (no breakup). The former was AT&T; the latter, Microsoft. Now the clock has come around to Google. Some have called Google the Bell Labs of the AI industry — yet the real, legendary Bell Labs was born inside AT&T, and unquestionably benefited from AT&T's monopoly position at the time. I recommend this book to anyone who wants, and has the patience, to understand every detail of the AT&T breakup case. You'll see how a case is born, the inevitabilities and contingencies it passes through during its protracted evolution, and finally arrives at the ending you've already been spoiled on. You'll also be drawn in by the vividly drawn, "doing their job wherever they stood" lawyers (on both sides), executives, politicians, and judges.
- 11 -
The Problem of Pain
Author: C.S. Lewis
Recommended by: Xuechen Wang
C.S. Lewis draws widely and explains deeply, firm without being dogmatic, profound without being obscure, analyzing an eternal question with both rationality and candor — deeply illuminating.
- 12 -
Profiting from Profits
Author: Zhou Feizhou
Recommended by: Bosen Xu
A frequently quoted line from the book: "The starting point for understanding China's governance problems today is not the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee thirty years ago, but more importantly, the tax-sharing reform fifteen years before that."
- 13 -
The Gains and Losses of Chinese Political Systems Through the Ages
Author: Yan Bojun
Recommended by: Mengqi Ji
The American Dilemma
Author: Qiang Ge
Recommended by: Mengqi Ji
I read The American Dilemma before the U.S. election, then revisited The Gains and Losses of Chinese Political Systems Through the Ages after the September policy package — and it sorted out many of my confusions about policies and political events this year. Especially Qian Mu's classic: whenever you find yourself wondering what has become of this world, it's worth pulling out again. Though with macro questions we can only accept; after all, it's the micro where we can actually make a difference.
- 14 -
The Chinese Typewriter
Author: Thomas S. Mullaney
Recommended by: Daiwei Wu
A story of imaginative product definition and the great practice of several "product managers" — solving an innovation problem across disciplinary boundaries. Fascinating history.
Join the Conversation
Share your 2024 reading reflections or book recommendations in the comments. We'll select two standout comments to receive a gift from 5Y Capital.
5Y Capital seeks out, supports, and inspires lonely entrepreneurs, providing support from the spiritual to the operational. We believe that if the you whom others see as crazy begins to be believed in, the world will become a different place.
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