Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Published 2018 · 380 pages · 95,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Business & Self-Help, Mystery & Crime, Nonfiction
How hard is Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup to read?
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup scores 30 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 40 out of 100
- Clear investigative journalism with some medical and business terminology explained in context.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Crisp, journalistic sentences. Carreyrou writes for clarity and momentum.
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- The broader implications about tech culture emerge from the specific story rather than abstract analysis.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with names, dates, technical details, and parallel storylines tracking the fraud and the investigation.
- Narrative indirection: 25 out of 100
- Mostly chronological investigative narrative with some jumping between timelines for dramatic effect.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Straightforward investigative journalism. The facts speak for themselves.
- Ironic distance: 35 out of 100
- Carreyrou lets the irony of the situation — celebrated genius as serial fraudster — speak without editorializing.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- The fraud is fully exposed. The criminal trial provides closure (updated in later editions).
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Chronological narrative with multiple character threads that converge. Well-organized investigative structure.
How Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup is regarded
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup holds a literary regard score of 53 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.