Books like GRQ — picked by fans

The last time I reread a book was The Color Purple in college. This time, I revisited The Rise of Technosocialism.

I initially read it from a macroeconomic viewpoint. The second time was as a personal reflection. I saw my life differently after the second time. I was stuck between two black-and-white choices: go get a traditional job or accept entrepreneurial failure. 

The book revealed a third path, which is building in the gray zone. I can define my role in the growing digital economy without fitting into either conventional category. I now have a new perspective with new possibilities.

Rereading this book helped me see a flexible, innovative way forward beyond a traditional role and repeated setbacks. I am now embracing a more adaptable approach to my career.

This book changed how I think about money.

I used to think of non-cash (credit cards, PayPal, and crypto) as a vague construct that wasn’t real, unlike cash. Now I think of money as a system. I saw the difference between what I was taught about finance and how digital money moves. 

More importantly, this book forced me to think hard about resilience because my desmoid tumor, which I had fought for years and thought was gone, grew back. And I've spent years building a brand without getting paid. I wondered for four years what I was doing wrong. I now see navigating modern financial systems isn’t about knowledge but about resilience instead. I must adapt, be aware, and be resilient.

I didn’t read this book about a hacker who broke into the phone number system just for a fun read. I read it as a chance to try something similar with artificial intelligence to protect myself. I get tons of spam and phishing emails.

I get fifty robocalls a day. At first, I just ignored them. But then they became impossible to continuously ignore because some seemed so real. I needed a way to understand the current landscape and how this stuff spreads.

I became a lot more curious and looked beneath the surface. The book forced me to stop just looking at face value. I stopped watching systems and started learning them. I can now spot the fraud attempts. I also discovered how much I care about ethics, values, and morals.

Often over the past few years, as a self-published author, I have felt invisible. But this book showed me what being invisible really is.

For me, this book is not just about immigration or labor. I can see how everything keeps running while leaving out the people who sustain the system. I thought I was outside the traditional system because with Bitcoin, I thought I was part of a rebellion and a new global movement.

I thought there was “the system” and then there was Bitcoin. I didn't realize Bitcoin is a system too. And I didn't see that some people have no system, and maybe never will. I started to be grateful to be part of something where I count, or at least have a chance to count.

This book is laugh-out-loud funny. The rich socialite heroine is quite intelligent in some things and ridiculously stupid in others. The whole book is absolutely unbelievable, but utterly delightful – and way beyond society's terms of approval for women in 1907 Los Angeles. Sometimes a book doesn’t have to be anything but a joy to read. This one delivers.

I first read this book as a teenager and missed the full force of its ferocious satire. Re-reading it years later, I laughed out loud. Waugh’s genius is to set his story of a love triangle in a Los Angeles funeral home. This way, he gets to poke fun at Hollywood and the American funeral industry while giving the dead a prominent role in the drama.

When, for example, embalmer Mr. Joyboy starts wooing young cosmetician Aimée Thanatogenos, he does it through the expressions he puts on the faces of the corpses he sends to her makeup studio. When Aimée falls for his rival, a poet and pet mortician, the beatific smiles of Mr. Joyboy’s death turn into ghastly grimaces. It’s one of my favorite moments in the book—but there are many more.

This Stoker Award-winner nearly caused me to miss a connecting flight to Los Angeles. I started reading it in an airport restaurant and got completely swept away until the final boarding call. In Covenant, a big-city journalist visits a small Midwest town to investigate a series of mysterious suicides. What unfolds is a gripping supernatural tale filled with mysterious characters, riveting conflict, and unthinkable twists.

I absolutely loved this book. One of the most beautiful stories I’ve ever read, it’s heartfelt and hilarious. After running his own bookshop in Seattle, Andrew Bloomfield moves to Hollywood to become a screenwriter and discovers a colony of feral cats living in his backyard. He was not a cat person. After witnessing one too many raccoon and coyote attacks and hungry, crying kittens, he and his two female housemates intervene and start caring for these wild yet vulnerable cats who transform his life. With his sharp wit and keen eye for detail, Bloomfield is a brilliant storyteller. I got completely caught up in the soap-opera dramas and death-defying moments of these cats, along with the heartaches and triumphs of rescuing them.

This is the third book in the Trip Callaway Gig mystery series written by Phil Swann. While I’ve enjoyed all the Trip Callaway books, I especially like this one because it takes place in 1966 Hollywood. In this story, musician and undercover agent Trip Callaway takes us into the world of Los Angeles studio musicians, who played on all those memorable recordings and variety shows of the time. On top of spending some quality time in great, but sadly long gone, Hollywood hotspots like Shelly’s Manne Hole, The Palomino, and Martoni’s – places I went growing up in Los Angeles – Tinseltown Tango is also a ripping good yarn. If you enjoy a good murder mystery with a dash of music and no shortage of laughs, check out this book. You won’t be disappointed. 

Doubling as both a political thriller and political satire, and set on an unnamed, maybe South American island, Idra Novey’s novel about a corrupt senator stars powerful women who are determined to uncover a past sexual assault and possible murder, ultimately speaking truth to power.