Silicon Valley literary travel prescription
Small Fry (Memoir) by Lisa Brennan-Jobs
A brilliant memoir by the daughter of the late Steve Jobs (Apple co-founder) whose story narrates her journey to integrate two entirely different worlds with parents who could not be more different in order to find her own unique identity and place in the world. A story about hardship, love, home and family.
Get your copy here.
Bad Blood: Secrets in a Silicon Valley Startup (Non-fiction) by John Carreyrou
One of the biggest corporate frauds since Enron, prize-winning journalist John Carreyrou, ambitiously tells the story of a young female CEO and Stanford dropout, Elizabeth Holmes, and her company Theranos who sought to change the medical world through the provision of instant blood testing. So powerful was the idea, concept and story, the company was initially valued at US$9 billion only to come crashing down on the stark realisation that there was no technology that could do this yet, despite Holmes’s persistent claims to the contrary.
Endless testing at Walgreens led to inaccurate results putting patients at risk. Theranos struggled to get it right.
A fine piece of good old-fashioned investigative journalism by Carreyrou, who interviewed more than 60 Theranos employees as well as test patients and doctors to get to the bottom of the story.
Get your copy here.
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener
Page turning, Uncanny Valley is a striking memoir of a young millennial swapping book publishing for a decadent role in the Silicon Valley start-up bubble - where everything is about the continuous optimisation of technology, changing the world for better, embracing venture capital culture - all in the name of progress.
However is this utopia or dystopia? A hauntingly frank insight into start up culture from the exploitation of our deepest darkest desires to the disillusionment and ambivalence that it throws up for anyone caught up in the industry, that's largely unregulated.
A coming-of-age story, it will leave you thinking long into the night about ambition, exuberance and power, it's consequences only unfolding now.
Get your copy here.
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More book prescriptions can be found at our A-Z of Book Prescriptions.
A big hello and thank you for reading! Passionate about literature, psychology, and life I launched Book Therapy as an alternative form of therapy using the power of literature. I train mental health professionals, librarians, teachers as well as readers on using bibliotherapy in their own work through our online Bibliotherapy, Literature and Mental Health course. We also curate reading lists/personalised book prescriptions for clients based on their individual needs. This is our signature personalised reading service.
You can also check out Book Therapy’s other free reading lists and A- Z of book prescriptions (covering both fiction and non-fiction). These suggest books based on your existing life situation (e.g. anxiety, job change, relationship heartache) as well as interests (e.g memoir, historical fiction, non-fiction, crime etc). There’s also a Children’s A — Z of Book Prescriptions. Feel free to check out the blog for more literary gems. There’s also a post on my personal story of how I entered the world of bibliotherapy and book curation.
In this role, I have had the opportunity to publish a book called The Happiness Mindset, and write various literary essays and pieces for newspapers and magazines. I have undertaken bibliotherapy workshops for The United Nations, various libraries in New York and corporate organisations in the UK and US. My book recommendations have featured in the Guardian, Marie Claire, NBC News, Asian Voice, New York Observer, Sydney Telegraph and various other publications. If you are a parent you might enjoy a podcast I’ve recorded with speech and language therapist Sunita Shah on Raising A Reader & Storyteller. And if you’d like to connect, email me at bijal@booktherapy.io or www.booktherapy.io.
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