Great Reads, Interesting Books, and The Scrapiest Book

 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 in 2023 !!!

 

 

Money Men: A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth by Dan McCrum

The famous saying goes, `You can fool all people sometime... but not all people all time''. Bigots and Despots of the 21st Century have learned to work around it. They now concentrate on increasing the sub-set of `some people all time'' to increase their leash on democracies. Frauds or societal wrongs in democracies are not facilitated by the co-conspirators but by men and women in the system who have a conscience and don'tdon't speak up. Even if these whistleblowers come out with the details, they require bold and honest journalists to highlight the wrongdoings raised.

Wire Card was this big German fintech company. It was supposed to be the Pay Pal of Europe. However, under the skin, it was a company manipulating balance sheets, indulging in money laundering, facilitating online gambling, and paying drug dealers. This Company, at its peak, was valued at US$ 28 billion and a little more. Finally, a dozen whistleblowers and a bold journalist Dan McCrum from Financial Times busted the bubble, or else it would have gone on for a longer time.

When Dan McCrum began his investigations into the Company based on an alert from a whistleblower, he was accused of being in league with short sellers to facilitate stock price manipulation. He was spied upon, legal proceedings started against him, and he was generally accused of trying to sabotage Germany's / Europe's fintech giant. As a result, Dan McCrum's systems and investigation teams were regularly subject to hacking and phishing emails.

The auditors Ernst and Young'' who had looked after WireCard accounts for nearly 10 years, surprisingly did not find anything amiss in this Company, leave alone scandalous. The German authorities, surprisingly, could not guess what the Company was up to.

Dan McCrum did not crack the story over a few assumptions. Instead, he investigated the wrongdoing for six years, collected evidence painstakingly and reported them with a lot of responsibility. During this time, his integrity was questioned, his personal safety was threatened, and he feared for his family's safety.

The evil face of Wire Card was Jan Marselek, who was in cahoots with two countries' intelligence agencies. He was the COO of Wire Card. He played by every dirty trick that could be conceived. Finally, wire Card gets exposed by one of its tall claims, which is how the cookie crumbled. Read the book to find out what it is all about !!! After having done all the Monstrosities stuff, he just vanished into thin air when the scandal was about to explode. He is suspected of being in hiding under an assumed identity in Russia. To top it all, he was a high school dropout!

Dan'sDan's book is compelling, though it involves excessive detailing of his life during the investigation. If you can endure that, this book is a thrilling read. Kudos to Dan for having pioneered such an investigation and documenting his experience. I heard the book on Audible. It has been narrated by the author himself, and the emotions he felt at various point of the investigation is apparent in the audible version.

One wishes that many journalists worldwide do such investigations and tear the mask off the noble and victorious faces of many dubious billionaires, bigots, oligarchs, and despots.

You can also see the documentary ""Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard"" if visual medium impresses you. However, you must know the issue to think critically about that narcissistic public figure or the shady businessman growing exponentially in everything he or she does. That may save your society.