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Disrupted: My misadventure in the start-up bubble

Read Disrupted: My misadventure in the start-up bubble by Dan Lyons

For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession–until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. « I think they just want to hire younger people, » his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of « marketing fellow. » What could go wrong?

HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place … by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; « shower pods » became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the « content factory, » Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on « walking meetings, » and Dan’s absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had « graduated » (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball « chair. »

The book started alright, surprisingly. It’s the story of this really whiny and self-entitled guy who starts working in a tech company and complains about everything that happens, and some parts of it are pretty relatable (yes, I do work at HubSpot, yes, I’m 22 and right out of college, and yes, there are some…

Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End

Read Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End by Manel Loureiro

The dead rise…

A mysterious incident in Russia, a blip buried in the news—it’s the only warning humanity receives that civilization will soon be destroyed by a single, voracious virus that creates monsters of men.

Humanity falls…

A lawyer, still grieving over the death of his young wife, begins to write as a form of therapy. But he never expected that his anonymous blog would ultimately record humanity’s last days.

The end of the world has begun…

Governments scramble to stop the zombie virus, people panic, so-called “Safe Havens” are established, the world erupts into chaos; soon it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. Armed only with makeshift weapons and the will to live, a lone survivor will give mankind one last chance against…

I didn’t think any zombie book could be as good as World War Z. This one wasn’t either. But hey, it was much better than most others I’ve read.

The Martian

Read The Martian by Andy Weir

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?

A brilliant read. Sometimes, the humour gets heavy, but the scientific detail is just amazing, and never gets tiring even though it can at times be pretty technical. This book was very obviously written for an on-screen adaptation, but it still reads very easily.

The Boston Girl

Read The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine – a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her « How did you get to be the woman you are today? » She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

I started this book almost by mistake, thinking that I probably wouldn’t like it. After twenty pages at most, I was so deeply engrossed in the story that I couldn’t stop reading it, and finished during the night. This story is well-written and interesting, and while mixing sadder and lighter parts (just like in any…