Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Thanks to all the Cannonballers who reviewed this. I picked it up way sooner because of that than I would have otherwise.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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You guys gotta read this shit. I listened to the audiobook version, and I kept looking for reasons to listen, it was so compelling. Just really solid investigative journalism into a story that seems unbelievable when you string it all together. By now, not many people haven’t heard of Elizabeth Holmes and her sham Silicon Valley start-up company, Theranos, but just in case you haven’t, Holmes started Theranos in 2003 just after dropping out of Stanford. Her dream was to produce a medical device that […]

A perfect storm of human greed and opportunity

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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After the fact, I described this book to my sister as “The whole book, from a certain perspective, is full indictment of modern capitalism” (at the time I was hung up on the single sentence anecdote that a billionaire investor shrugged off his $100 million loss as a tax write off, so I was in full EAT THE RICH mode). The summation, while slightly cavalier, is also not wrong. Unfettered, unregulated capitalism is what allowed Theranos to thrive for nearly a decade, bilking hundreds of millions […]

Idylls of the Queen

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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I think by now most of us have heard at least the outline of the story told in Bad Blood: Elizabeth Holmes, the youngest self-made female billionaire (and founder of Theranos) who somehow misled and deceived investors and board members into believing she had revolutionized blood testing and was able to test for literally hundreds of conditions using a single drop of blood. If it were true, it would have changed the world, but, of course, it wasn’t true. Holmes is set to go on […]

Non-Fiction Round Up

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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Advice in the age of the internet, and a scary as hell Silicon Valley story. (3 stars) Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey I will be the first to admit that I’m not the target audience for this book. Franchesca Ramsey had always hoped to go viral on YouTube, but never expected it would be for her spoof video What White Girls Say… to Black Girls. When that video blew up, she ended up in the center […]

Bad to the Bone – but Not in a Cool George Thorogood Way, but an Infuriating One.

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

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  Ahahaha, this book pissed me off so much! I just could not believe how bad the whole Theranos debacle was. I mean, I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the subject before going in – I knew that, by and large, most of the companies claims were fraudulent. But there was still plenty of room to be surprised at how bad the damned thing actually was. Fair warning – this review is going to be a bit rant-like at points. I developed a lot of pent […]

Cause baby now we got bad blood

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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OMG this book annoyed me so much!  The writing was great, and it was so well investigated, but the characters drove me bonkers!  To think that they’re all real people makes me even madder.  I borrowed this book from my library back in the winter.  I got about fifty pages in and was just so frustrated with it that I ran out of time and didn’t get to finish before someone else placed a hold.  Then I kinda forgot about it for a while.  Once […]



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