Reviews and Comments

A fun, encouraging, accessible way into journaling for mental clarity. I like the playful and lighthearted approach and the funny characterizations of all the creatures in our brain-boat. The goof-o-meter is high, yet important nuances are preserved and the prompts are very helpful. If you want to get into journaling to better understand yourself and your aims, and especially if you're inclined to laugh at yourself sometimes, this is a good guide.

Prescient story!

I enjoyed this. It's an impressive study, and I liked the glimpses into a variety of peoples lives, seeing how they lived, the choices they made. The emphasis is on relationships, and how crucial they are to a sense of a good life. This is both heartening and saddening, as it seems so many feel increasingly isolated and not knowing how to cultivate positive relationships. So I wished for a bit more depth around the pervading loneliness and how we can support one another to connect in meaningful ways.

I really enjoyed The Employees. It does not resemble other stories! I read it slowly, giving each statement time to sink in, to imagine the life beyond the fragments shared in each snippet. They are each so potent, full of spoken and unspoken longing. So I read each page and lingered with it, going very slowly through this short book. Each page is a world unto itself, yet connected to the other characters and broader story, which unfolds slowly, mysteriously, giving you just enough to wonder more.

The Employees reminded me in style a bit of Piranesi and Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead, two other mysterious tales that I enjoyed, although not in the same space setting. I think if you enjoyed either of those books, you might like The Employees.

This book is a profound and compassionate response to a horrific "accident" (crash) that killed the author's best friend. Singer digs deep into U.S. society's flawed notion of "accidents" and unpacks the conditions that make these "accidents" inevitable, the biases that block us from seeing them clearly and the obstacles to preventing them. I'd recommend this to everyone really, but particularly anyone involved/interested in government, city planning, harm reduction, and societal systems. The more we know, the more we can work toward prevention.