Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions
Dispatches from the Working Class

This "memoir" for lack of a better term is a retelling of the author's life in 1980s Texas. It reads like a collection of long form short stories. J.R. Helton pulled me right into his world of a creative and talented guy ("Jake" the protagonist) who just kinda stops giving a shit for several years a......more

I read this around the same time as J.D.Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy", and felt it made a good companion piece, with its tales of life on the breadline in contemporary America, and the things people do to make ends meet when living hand to mouth. Helton jumps from shitty job (selling pumpkins at the side......more

I had read some J.R. Helton's contributions to The Sun magazine and found them intriguing enough to track down his book, which was like reading a 200 page long essay from The Sun. An exceptionally apt book title. The only way to make the name more accurate is if the word selfish could be worked in t......more

In his memoir, Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions, JR Helton (who goes by the name Jake in the book), visits his younger years in 1980s Austin, Texas. It’s a time of working shitty barely blue collar gigs that are hardly on the fast track to respectability and career success. And it’s also a time when he f......more

this was a super fast read, and felt familiar in that late 1980's, early 1990's post Reagan pre grunge youth angst way. Except for the fact that there is not really any teen angst or navel staring passages. The author chronicles his young adult life wandering, starting and quitting jobs at random mo......more