rcmnd

PachinkoBook

by Min Jin Lee

Who uses, recommends or left Pachinko, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

3 people

Jessica Fain
Product leader at Webflow when they spoke to Lenny's Podcast in 2026; earlier chief of staff to Slack's chief product officer.
loved

Pachinko does this with a family in Korea over generations and moving to Japan.

Lenny's Podcast, "The art of influence: The single most important skill left that AI can’t replace", lightning round, asked for the books they recommend most; the guest's own spoken answer (YouTube captions).

2026-03-22·youtube.com ↗

Sarah Tavel
General partner at Benchmark; earlier a partner at Greylock and an early product lead at Pinterest.
loved

Pachinko is one of the best fictional books I've read in a while I just loved it and so I highly recommend that

Lenny's Podcast, "The hierarchy of engagement", lightning round, asked for the books they recommend most; the guest's own spoken answer (YouTube captions).

2023-12-27·youtube.com ↗

Rohini Pandhi
Product leader at Mercury; previously at Square and Opendoor.
recommended

so uh Pachinko, Cutting for Stone, Song of Achilles, all great ones that I've read recently when I've had some beach time, so highly recommend.

Lenny's Podcast, "How to build your product team from scratch, attract top product talent, go multi-product, and more", lightning round, asked for the books they recommend most; the guest's own spoken answer (YouTube captions).

2025-01-12·youtube.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.