Book Blog #322: Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

 

Title: Bad Blood

Author: John Carreyrou

# of Pages: 300 (hardback)

Genre: Non-fiction, Biography

Rating: ★★★★☆

Synopsis: In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at $9 billion, putting Holmes's worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn't work. For years, Holmes had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at The Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company's value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors. Here is the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a disturbing cautionary tale set amid the bold promises and gold-rush frenzy of Silicon Valley.

Review: The first time I heard about Elizabeth Holmes, it was a Reddit post talking about how she faked a deep voice for pretty much her whole career. I watched a video, was mildly amused by how unnatural it sounded (especially knowing it was already fake, and then moved on with my day. 

Fast forward to 2021/2022, Holmes is in all the headlines. I didn't know anything about Theranos and why exactly she was on trial other than running a scam startup and that she was going to great lengths to push back the trial and avoiding going to prison to serve her sentence. I meant to read this book during all of that hype, but didn't get around to it until now coincidentally when there's been a lot of other tech CEO headlines have to plentiful. Crypto CEO Sam Bankman-Fried recently was sentenced for his own type of fraud,  and CEO Sam Altman was ousted from his position at OpenAI for not being trustworthy (exact reason still TBD), and CEO Kyle Vogt of Cruise stepped down not long after the company lost its license to test self-driving cars after one of their vehicles struck a pedestrian. 

Now I know the extent of the scam that Holmes created with Theranos, thanks to Bad Blood. I appreciate Carreyrou doing his due diligence to create a full picture of the scam company. There are many perspectives (employees, potential investors, FDA and military officials) to show all the signs that led to the revelation that Theranos never got passed the "dream" stage for Holmes, despite her promises of having a working product. 

The various perspectives seemed overwhelming at first - each person is introduced to the reader with a bit of background which became exhausting when new people were introduced every chapter. Some of these people mentioned again - some are unimportant after supplying their experiences to the pool. Carreyrou did a pretty good job at reintroducing people as their names came up again in later chapter, so I didn't have much of a problem following what was going on (the hardest name to remember was Carreyrou's since he talks in first person about himself, but other characters might mention his last name). 

What was a little harder to follow was some of the domain specific details. If the reader doesn't have as much background in these areas, it could be slower going reading through the explanations of what's happening in the "development process" (if we can even call it that) of the Theranos products, and this doens't even include the different approvals (patents, license, etc.) of which the average person is likely unfamiliar with. 

Although it's not the most gripping nor the most fun nor the most easy to read nonfiction book I've read, it's definitely more readable than many nonfiction books out there (especially since this is one is more of a biography than autobiography, with the former running the risk of sound too textbook). 

If you're interested in this book, I would recommend giving it a read since it goes over the case in great detail. My only major wish for this book is for it to have been written later to cover the trial period. 

Book Blog #321: Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

 

Title: Us Against You

Author: Fredrik Backman

# of Pages: 697 (large print)

Genre: Adult, Fiction, Contemporary 

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: After everything that the citizens of Beartown have gone through, they are struck yet another blow when they hear that their beloved local hockey team will soon be disbanded. What makes it worse is the obvious satisfaction that all the former Beartown players, who now play for a rival team in Hed, take in that fact. Amidst the mounting tension between the two rivals, a surprising newcomer is handpicked to be Beartown’s new hockey coach. Soon a new team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker. But bringing this team together proves to be a challenge as old bonds are broken, new ones are formed, and the enmity with Hed grows more and more acute. As the big match approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt grows deeper. By the time the last game is finally played, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after all they’ve been through, the game they love can ever return to something simple and innocent.

Review: Despite Backman's long-winded writing style, I'm somehow still hooked into his books. 

Since I liked Beartown so much, I knew I would at least halfway like the sequel. That turned out to be true - it's been a while since I felt the desire to read the sequel in the a series, and I was happy to hear more about the characters I was cheering for in the first book. 

That being said, I can't give this book 4 stars for a couple of reasons:

1. Unlike Beartown, Us Against You doesn't have a strong focus. 

I've always had issues with POV switching, but the third person POV switching worked in Beartown. In the sequel, it suffers from the usual issues I usually see - too many parallel stories that are not weaved close enough together. Since there's already so many characters to care about, their lives are inevitably going to diverge from each other, which makes the reader wonder what we are trying to read about in the first place. 

I would rather have Backman try to slim down the updates on different character to favor a strong story line. Beartown had a strong story line from building a plot around a hockey game timeline and rape that are more evenly spread across the entire book. The same can't be said for the sequel - the hockey games are more of an after thought and are not a strong enough device to frame the progression of the plot. 

Instead, Backman adds some new characters. to name a couple: Vidar, who never  got enough time in the spotlight to develop his reputation as a "troublemaker" in the readers eyes, and Richard Theo, who's character's only purpose is demonstrate the political "games" politicians play with the lives of the people they are supposed to serve. These new characters paired with Kira, who battles with balancing her obligations to her family and her career, and Maya, who's interests are always tangential to the ongoing hockey focused events, make the story seem like one jumble of lives between which Backman haphazardly bouncing the narrative.

Backman also cranked up the "deep and meaningful" messaging in this one. I liked the balance he had in Beartown - focusing on a more neutral topic of what sports can mean to different people and then delving into the deeper topic of how people react to rape, what it means for the victim and their loved ones, etc.  In this one, Backman tries to tackle the influence of politicians, gender inequality (particularly the struggle of women living in a man's world), and homophobia.  It reminded me of Grey's Anatomy - a little too forced, a little too obvious to land the same impact as similar messaging that is better blended in to a (better) plot.

2. By the end of the book, it doesn't feel like anything actually HAPPENED.

Yes, of course something happened, but did it warrant a whole book written about it? This was more of a tragic slice of life that didn't particularly bring us anywhere. Without any major spoilers, I'll say that I would have felt about the same as if I didn't read this book. One aspect that Backman did well was giving Benji a lot more time for his character to shine through, and my love for this character has only grown since the first book. 

But as far as everyone else, there's not much that happened to them that made me feel like this was a book that well-deserved a read. From reading the synopsis of the third book, it sounds like it will be more of the same, so I probably won't be reading the last book in the series.