The temperatures are going to reach into the triple digits today, so I’m thinking about upcoming trips to the coast, the mountains, and other cooler climates. That means books to bring along. I bring a book everywhere I go, no matter what the weather.
The two books I’m featuring today from my shelf have nothing in common except that both are supposed to be extremely interesting and extremely good.
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
by John Boyne
My husband is from an Irish family so I originally got this one for him.
This is the official description:
From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man’s life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland
Cyril Avery is not a real Avery — or at least, that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?
Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his many years, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.
In this, Boyne’s most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.
Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
By John Carreyrou
My kids talked me into getting this one. It is a fascinating story. A young woman who is brilliant, beautiful, and has the determination and leadership skills we all want our kids to have goes down the wrong path. Why? Greed. Let’s get reading.
The official write up:
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: NPR, The New York Times Book Review, Time, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post • The McKinsey Business Book of the Year
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the one-time multibillion-dollar biotech startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes—now the subject of the HBO documentary The Inventor—by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end.
“The story is even crazier than I expected, and I found myself unable to put it down once I started. This book has everything: elaborate scams, corporate intrigue, magazine cover stories, ruined family relationships, and the demise of a company once valued at nearly $10 billion.” —Bill Gates
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 testing 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 more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work.
A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.
Unlike my choices last week these are fairly new books (2017 and 2018.) You’ll be able to find both online, in bookstores (yes there are still a few left) and in your local library.
For more book suggestions and to find out what I’m reading this summer check out my other 2019 Summer Reading Posts. I’m posting every Monday for the rest of the summer.
~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman
Vampire Maman 