Often, I end up reading books that only a few would fancy. This year has been no different, thanks to Amazon algorithms. I have named a few books I read this year: Great Reads, Interesting Reads, and This Was Behind Me/ Scrapy Read. The individual books are not classified in any particular order.
Great Reads.
Ashoka The Great Wytze Keuning
Like every other Indian kid, I read about Ashoka, The Great, while in school. One day I saw someone writing on the internet, `Ashoka The Not So Great’, which triggered me to read more about this historical figure. I made the cardinal mistake of trying to google, but nothing was different from what I already knew. Research led me to this Book, and what a book it is! Historical Fiction at its best.
This Book was written by Wytze Keuning in Dutch and translated into English by JE Steur. It consists of 3 books, but they are available in India as a single book.
Book I – Ashoka The Wild Prince
Book II – Ashoka, The Wise Ruler
Book III – The World’s Greatest Teacher
Halfway through the first book, I could guess why a particular crowd prefers to refer to him as `Ashoka The Not So Great’. He was too radical for his time and was the anathema of the accepted norms of his lifetime.
The author had never been to India, but the Book is well-researched. This Book is an easy read as it is vividly descriptive. Though it runs into 1000 pages, you can finish it in a couple of months, even if you are a slow reader like me.
Alphabetical by Roy Phoenix
This book is the most intelligently written fiction I have read. If George Orwell’s `Animal Farm’ was an allegory on dystopia, this one written by Roy Phoenix is on Majoritarianism. Using Vowels and Consonants in the English Alphabet, the author has woven a wonderful tale to explain the importance of harmony in society. He also highlights the consequence of listening to a mad majoritarian leader who has no clue about what he is up to. This Book is full of serious issues put together humorously. That consonants are the majority and vowels are the minority in English Alphabet is a known fact. However, for language intricacies, only vowels get the article "an" before them. This privilege irks one consonant with a deep inferiority complex to provoke other consonants against vowels. This Book is an easy and light read. It can be completed in less than two days.
Money Men by Dan McCrum
Dan Mccrum, a Financial Times journalist, gets a whiff of scandal about a company whose worth runs into billions. This company is considered the jewel crown of its country. Dan McCrum believed there could not be one cockroach in the kitchen and started investigating Wirecard, the German Fintech giant, in 2014. The company was finally brought down in 2020. During this period, Mccrum faced a lot of accusations, lawsuits, and even sublime physical threats. He was accused of conspiring with short sellers and trying to bring down the share price of this iconic German company. Jan Marselek, the ex-COO of Wirecard was all that you can expect from a villain. The bubble of this company burst when it was valued at the peak of US$ 30 billion, leaving the shareholders with many losses. Is it possible for the German authorities not to know that this company’s dealings were hanky panky? A preposterous assumption, I would say. The company claimed it had US$ 2 billion in cash reserves, and an intense audit burst its bubble. This company was audited by one of the top four audit companies in the world and yet could pull off a scam of this magnitude. By the end of the Book, you would be convinced that monitoring standards in the financial sector is apalling worldwide.
I read this book through Audible and saw a documentary on the same issue on Netflix. The level of difficulty of reading this book is moderate to difficult. You have to repeatedly scroll through the Book to get hold of the fraud committed by Wirecard. Having said that, if you can strain your intellect and read this book, your critical thinking faculties will increase.
I wish every country has journalists like Dan Mccrum and media houses like Financial Times that investigate without fear and favour.
Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom.
I knew about this book since it was published but never found it exciting enough to read. The Ghana Cough Syrup crisis drove me to read this book through Audible. This Book is an in-depth investigative research on how Ranbaxy malevolently managed the production of generic drugs meant for the US Market. It also indicts the laxity of the FDA in not calling out such companies for fear of diplomatic strain. It is shocking to note that defective processes were not rectified, but the results were fixed. Branded drugs were smuggled through company executives travelling from abroad to be used for testing instead of the generic equivalent that the company was contracted for.
The Book is a must-read to understand what unethical Pharma companies can do. Katherine Eban has written an objective book without being invective. However, I wonder who monitors the medicines that my family and I have. What is the scrutiny process? How stringent is it? Read the Book you too will get the same doubts.We must improve our respect for quality and ethical manufacturing practices to ensure that Make in India delivers on its objectives.
Nothing To See Here By Kevin Wilson
This work by Kevin Wilson is not another fiction; it is a page from our lives. It is about dysfunctional families. It is about manipulative friends. It is about people who use their families as a pedestal for success. It is about Lillian, the loser, but you wish this world had more losers like. I felt like reading a Fredrick Backman book.
Interesting Reads of the Year
A Nation of Idiots by Daksh Tyagi – A book that chronicles the idiosyncracies of our society in a humorous way.
Amazing Words by Phil Cousineau – It is a must read if you want to know how the English we speak, write, and understand evolved to the present stage.
How To Be An Alien by George Mikes – Trolls British society mercilessly.
Scrappy Read
Catch Me If You Can by Frank W Abganale – This is supposed to be on an actual incident, but its contents seemed to me stranger than fiction
Happy Reading!!!
