One for the times

Well, this one was certainly timely.

Startup is a tech story set in New York, not Silicon Valley. All the main characters work for two companies in the same building–one, the titular startup and the other a TechCrunch-style news source. The characters feel a little stock, frankly. There’s the tech bro, the jaded reporter, the dogged reporter, the put-upon wife, the pretty girl. As tech bro starts to secure another round of fund for his (honestly, useless) app, a story starts to break that he maybe possibly (definitely) sexually harassed someone in his workplace.

The quick review: it’s a good read. It wasn’t mindblowing, but it was better than average. The characters were rote, but the story was good. I inhaled the book in one night. There was a reveal in the end that was treated with the appropriate amount of scorn but I wish had been given more pages. All in all, I’d give it a B. It’s a good one for a commute–engaging enough to really get into, short and fast-paced enough that you won’t forget what you read last time.

I call it timely because it was released six months before the Weinstein story broke and #MeToo became a movement. You ever finish a book, read something about the author that changes your opinion of what you just read? Doree Shafrir is a journalist and a writer for BuzzFeed and learning this in its timing honestly just makes me wonder what real-life story she based this on. Was it her own? Was there a small app out there maybe with potential that got derailed because some entitled jackweasel couldn’t keep it in his pants and got his feelings hurt? She definitely made the “Get Rid Of Slimy girlS Club” of tech feel all too real.