An astute, entertaining appraisal of the daily grind that occasionally meanders off topic.
In this sardonic collection of poetry set in San Francisco, Gell grapples with soul-crushing work environments, a marriage’s end, and a search for meaning.
A self-described “company hack,” Gell immerses readers in a startup scene, where colleagues waste time with Nerf guns and pingpong battles. He judges his boss for chowing down on Lucky Charms while lecturing him about quotas in “This Man’s in Charge?” “The Value of a College Education” critiques the predatory nature of student loans and universities’ failure to share which majors generate “serious” income. Readers learn in “Who Is Your Master” that an MBA only makes one overqualified and underpaid. “Working Stiffs” finds the speaker reminiscing about his college days and longing for a greasy spoon called the Breakfast Buzz where “When the bill comes, / you only owe $27 / and you can’t feel your fucking legs!” The speaker finds some relief in a cabin in the redwoods in “West Marin, In Us All,” taking pleasure in “a hot shower, / a strong gummy, / pizza, / some good red.” Aging concerns arise in “Lines” when wrinkles appear and his beard starts graying. In “Slide Through Your Hands,” a divorce prompts the author to conclude “Love is cruel, / love is elusive,” yet he later ponders who his next love might be in “The Search Continues.” Gell deftly takes down corporate culture in this incisive poetry collection. Depictions of open-office hell are relatably conveyed, including overenthusiastic middle managers, pointless meetings, and the feeling that “lunch is always too short.” “Corporate America #2” is an entertaining list of oft-repeated workplace phrases, such as “You’re on mute.” However, some poems, like “Preventative Health,” about the author’s self-care strategies, seem outside of the book’s theme, while others (“Stop Trying So Hard”) read like stand-alone rants. Ultimately, Gell’s vulnerability humanizes the narrative, like a divorce poem in which, “The tears finally come— / a soft patter on the hardwood / of the soulless bedroom / that once had / hope.”
An astute, entertaining appraisal of the daily grind that occasionally meanders off topic.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798998799709
Page Count: 102
Publisher: Gell Studio Presents
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.
Avuncular observations on matters historical from the late popularizer of the past.
McCullough made a fine career of storytelling his way through past events and the great men (and occasional woman) of long-ago American history. In that regard, to say nothing of his eschewing modern technology in favor of the typewriter (“I love the way the bell rings every time I swing the carriage lever”), he might be thought of as belonging to a past age himself. In this set of occasional pieces, including various speeches and genial essays on what to read and how to write, he strikes a strong tone as an old-fashioned moralist: “Indifference to history isn’t just ignorant, it’s rude,” he thunders. “It’s a form of ingratitude.” There are some charming reminiscences in here. One concerns cajoling his way into a meeting with Arthur Schlesinger in order to pitch a speech to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy: Where Richard Nixon “has no character and no convictions,” he opined, Kennedy “is appealing to our best instincts.” McCullough allows that it wasn’t the strongest of ideas, but Schlesinger told him to write up a speech anyway, and when it got to Kennedy, “he gave a speech in which there was one paragraph that had once sentence written by me.” Some of McCullough’s appreciations here are of writers who are not much read these days, such as Herman Wouk and Paul Horgan; a long piece concerns a president who’s been largely lost in the shuffle too, Harry Truman, whose decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan McCullough defends. At his best here, McCullough uses history as a way to orient thinking about the present, and with luck to good ends: “I am a short-range pessimist and a long-range optimist. I sincerely believe that we may be on the way to a very different and far better time.”
A pleasure for fans of old-school historical narratives.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781668098998
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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