Dan Brown, Margaret Atwood, Kurt Vonnegut, Suzanne Collins, J.K. Rowling, Stieg Larson, you name it and you'll find plenty of critics who bashed it while readers loved it. I haven't done any research on the topic, but to me it feels like there are certain genres where critics and readers always tend to disagree with each other. I'm not sure if critics are more obsessed with the technical aspects of the writing instead of how the books make them "feel" though. Romance novels tend to catch the most flak from critics, but thrillers also regularly get a beating from critics. It's just one of those things that bookworms have to put up with!

Ok, so I'm probably going to get a few sceptical comments about my answers, but these are the non-fiction books that surprised me the most with how they captivated me.

1. The Fish That Ate The Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Rich Cohen) - This book has got nothing to do with fish or whales and everything to do with Samuel Zemurray. He was an ordinary guy who was so broke that he had to try and sell bannanas by the side of the road in order to try and make ends meet. It is what happens between that point and 69 years later when Samuel died as one of the most wealthiest men in the world that makes this book so interesting and it's not just all about bananas!

2. Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed The World (Mark Kurlanksy) - I know, I know, "How can a biography of a single species of fish be in any way exciting?" you are probably asking. Well, as insignificant as the humble cod may seem, it has had an enormous effect on history and culture. This is such an improbable book that nobody wants to read it when I recommend it to them, but trust me on this one, it is way more exciting and interesting than you can ever imagine.

3. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou) - This is another book that I just couldn't put down and the plot is so gripping that if it wasn't non-fiction everyone would probably have called it far-fetched. It's about Elizabeth Holmes, and the collapse of the multibillion-dollar biotech startup that she founded. This is a women who people called the female Steve Jobs and who managed to sell enough shares in her company, Theranos, to value it at more than nine billion. Her claim to fame was the machine that the company was going to make in order to streamline the process of blood testing. It all sounded amazing in theory, but all fell apart when it became clear that the technology Holmes was hyping up didn't actually work.

4. The Demon in the Freezer (Richard Preston) - Everyone knows Preston from his book, The Hot Zone, but to me The Demon in the Freezer was way more frightening. Instead of dealing with the Ebola virus like in The Hot Zone, this book is about smallpox and anthrax. The "Demon in the Freezer" that the title refers to is the smallpox virus samples that are kept in Atlanta and Moscow. Yes, it's a story about science and medicine, but it is also one of the most exciting non-fiction titles that I have ever read.

5. The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery (D.T. Max) - I don't know if it is just me, but medical mysteries can be as terrifying as they are fascinating. The title of this book refers to a Venetian family with a disturbing inherited disease that caused members to become unable to sleep once they reached middle age. The result was usually death within a few months. It's not the only story in this book either as there are accounts of people dying from uncontrollable laughter, deer starving to death in fields of grass and much more. Believe it or not, all of these cases have something in common.

For me, one of the best authors of Western fiction will always be Ron Hansen. Everyone who loves Westerns should already know about the one he wrote in 1979, called Desperadoes and the one from 1983, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Well, you asked if there are any authors who still write good Westerns and my answer would still be Ron Hansen. He didn't just write these classic Westerns, but in 2016 he also gave us The Kid. The Kid is the story of Henry McCarty, or as the world remembers him now, Billy The Kid. There are plenty of dime Western novels about Billy obviously, but The Kid is written in a way that only Ron Hansen can. Not all of his books are Westerns, unfortunately, but he is a great author that writes compelling stories no matter what genre he picks.

I'll recommand a great book called your money or your life of Joe Dominguez. It will help you not be a millionaire but get financial freedom

Salem's Lot
Stephen King