Books That Mattered

Books that shaped thinking, with notes on what they meant.

Contemplative Practice

Mantak Chia — The Inner Structure of Tai Chi

Source text for qigong practice. Chia's framework connects internal energy work to martial arts structure. Referenced alongside Jacob's QigongApp project and the broader interest in embodied practice as a complement to intellectual work.

Byron Katie — A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

Katie's method of self-inquiry ("The Work") applied to the Tao Te Ching. The title itself is a thesis: joy has a thousand names because it manifests differently in every situation, but the underlying state is the same.

Related: The Sedona Method, which approaches emotional release from a different angle but lands in a similar place.

The Sedona Method

Hale Dwoskin's technique for releasing emotional resistance. Complements Byron Katie's inquiry-based approach with a more body-centered, feeling-based practice.

Business & Entrepreneurship

Phil Knight — Shoe Dog

The Nike founding story. Referenced in the context of university partnerships and building companies that start from academic connections — Knight's relationship with Bill Bowerman at Oregon parallels Jacob's thinking about Stanford/Harvard/MIT partnerships for startups.

Fiction

Scott Alexander — Unsong

A serial novel about kabbalistic magic in a world where the laws of physics broke in 1968. Jacob read extensively, with multiple chapters saved in Apple Notes. The novel weaves theology, linguistics, computer science, and theodicy into a single narrative. Chapters saved include "Now Taking On Ahania's Form," "O Rose Thou Art Sick," "Puts All Heaven in a Rage," and "And Builds a Heaven in Hell's Despair."

The novel's central question — whether the universe is fundamentally meaningful or fundamentally arbitrary — connects to Jacob's interest in consciousness research and the relationship between information and meaning.

Reading Philosophy

Jacob's reading pattern, visible across the notes: books are not consumed linearly but mined for insights that connect to active projects. A qigong manual becomes relevant to an app project. A business memoir becomes relevant to a university partnership strategy. Fiction becomes relevant to consciousness research. The reading is always in service of synthesis.