Top Five (or Six) Books

I’ve been fortunate enough to read 50 books since I entered Life 3.0 back in 2019, which have run the gamut from ‘hard to get through’ to ‘utterly fascinating’.

 

A buddy suggested I put together my top five list, which I did, but I was never good at math, so it ended up being a top six.

 

I’ve put them in alphabetical order as I didn’t feel I could do justice to rank these amazing books.

 

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou:

• this story is similar to some Ponzi schemes that I’ve had the misfortune of being impacted by
• perhaps there was some mental therapy for me that incredibly bright people could end up bamboozled by Elizabeth Holmes and her multibillion-dollar biotech startup company Theranos, which is now an HBO documentary called ‘The Inventor’

 

Educated by Tara Westover:

• this book was on the top-selling list for 132 weeks, so it’s probably not a great surprise to be on my list
• it’s a true story, and it’s merely fascinating what Tara accomplished in her life, given her horrendous upbringing
• how could someone, whose first day in a classroom was at Cambridge University, become such a huge success (read this sentence again and again),

 

Monk of Mokha by Dave Eggers:

• considering I wasn’t a coffee drinker until I went to Colombia a few years ago, this pick will surprise my friends
• it’s an intriguing story of a Yemeni American in San Fransisco who tries to revive the fortunes of Yemeni coffee
• however, he becomes entrapped in a civil war as he tries to support the coffee growers in his native war-torn country

 

Red Notice by Bill Browder:

• every one of my friends that has read this book has enjoyed it
• it’s a real-life political thriller about an American financier in Russia, the murder of his tax attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the Kremlin’s corruption

 

the one by John Marrs:

• this fictional story of a DNA dating program was the biggest page-turner of my top picks with its short chapters that all ended with a cliff hanger (103 in total)
• eighty publishers rejected his script, and now it’s an upcoming Netflix series

 

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens:

• it’s sometimes hard to explain how the story of a ‘swamp girl’ in North Carolina’s outer banks could grab me so much, but the character, Kya, was portraited in a fierce and hauntingly beautiful manner
• considering this was Delia Owens first novel, she knocked it out of the park with this amazing fictional story