An entertaining cultural critique.
Bardzik shares “common nonsense” in an eclectic collection of aphorisms organized by theme.
Inspired by writers like Stanisław Jerzy Lec and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author pithily explores themes of truth, dissonance, and capitalism. The opening section skewers the performative nature of politics and the public’s apathy toward critical thinking: “The pursuit of nuance can be often laborious. The alternative is, however, to hand over your ears, eyes and brains to hate-mongers.” The contradictions of everyday language and social behavior are examined in a section on irony, and Bardzik considers the fragility of truth in the misinformation age. He brutally takes down corporate culture, criticizing its euphemistic jargon, empty overcommunication, and leadership hypocrisy in lines like, “‘We are in the same boat’ – said the CEO from the top deck.” Reflecting on the stock market, the author observes that no one ever utters, “We have had a horrific quarter” on an earnings call. Among Bardzik’s pet peeves are emails with too many recipients and “demands without stating the timing requested.” He imparts wisdom in a section about thinking: “We are what we are curious about, so we must be careful what we are curious about.” The author concludes with a self-reflection: “I sometimes sit, / I sometimes lie, / I sometimes stand, / but / I always stand corrected.” Bardzik maintains a consistently skeptical yet humorous tone as he contemplates the absurdity of modern life. While many of the aphorisms punch up, the author also injects funny, seemingly self-deprecating statements like, “If I had a choice, I would never work with me.” His representation of corporate culture is spot-on in lines like, “Put as much distance as possible between a decisionmaker and the accountable individual, and disastrous outcomes are practically guaranteed.” However, the outlook for humanity can be bleak in lines like, “We all have become hostages: of convenience.” The bullet-pointed lists of things people underestimate (“their intolerance of ambiguity”) and overestimate (“what they know”) can feel judgmental.
An entertaining cultural critique.Pub Date: April 26, 2025
ISBN: 9783033113084
Page Count: 51
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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