Bill Gates reveals his 5 favorite books of 2017

Bill Gates_Dec 2017 Books

Bill Gates reads around 50 books per year, but only a select few make his annual list of favorites.

For the last several years, the Microsoft founder has chosen five titles that he enjoyed over the past year and published reviews of them on his Gates Notes blog.

Here are his recommendations for 2017.

"The Best We Could Do" by Thi Bui

This autobiographic graphic novel follows the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who came to the United States after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

She learns a heartbreaking truth about the sacrifices her parents made for her and her siblings, as well as the turmoil created by French and American occupation in Vietnam.

"I thought she did a great job capturing how daunting it feels to be responsible for your family," Gates wrote. "At the same time, her family’s experience is different from most (and certainly mine). It’s clear that a lot of the dysfunction surrounding her childhood is a direct result of what happened in Vietnam."

"Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City" by Matthew Desmond

Gates called this book a "searing portrait of American poverty."

Desmond, a sociologist at Princeton University, spent 18 months living in two high-poverty neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — one mostly white, the other mostly black — and documented the lives of residents, including landlords and renters.

Gates said it was easy to empathize with the subjects, since Desmond helps you understand why they make their choices. He won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and a Pulitzer for "Evicted."

"When you’re paying so much to keep a roof over your head, there’s no room for bad luck. A single bad incident can send you reeling," Gates wrote.

"Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens" by Eddie Izzard

In this memoir, Izzard writes about how he worked through his childhood struggles, learned new skills, and became a world-renowned comedian, actor, writer, runner, and activist.

Gates said he connected with Izzard even though it would appear they have nothing in common. But that might be the very point the author is trying to communicate, Gates noted.

"I’ve recently discovered that I have a lot in common with a funny, dyslexic, transgender actor, comedian, escape artist, unicyclist, ultra-marathoner, and pilot from Great Britain. Except all of the above," Gates wrote. "We’re all cut from the same cloth. In his words, 'We are all totally different, but we are all exactly the same.'"

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