A wide-ranging, detailed, and extremely useful introduction to work and finances.
A compact guide to making clear-headed decisions at the start of adult life and work.
In his nonfiction debut, Qasim provides a life overview aimed at college students and younger adults to help them separate the important stuff from the trivia—and to think clearly about the important stuff in order to achieve success. The author measures success very practically: He asserts that within five years of graduating college, one should be earning at least double the national salary average and be able to pay expenses like rent and food, contribute to retirement plans, and set aside a rainy-day fund for emergencies. He urges his readers to follow their passions—but to do so intelligently, as maybe those passion won’t translate into prudent career choices. “Imagine graduating with an arts degree and having more than $100,000 in student loan debt only to find a job that barely pays the bills,” Qasim writes with typical bluntness. “It’s just not practical.” In these pages, he mentors readers on everything from designing an effective resume to the intricacies of dealing with job recruiters to behavior tips when starting a new job, such as being a little personal (but just a little: “There’s a difference between talking about your family and boasting about how you got super lit in college”). Throughout the book, the author maintains the same wonderfully straightforward tone, warning his readers about BS and “partial” BS while always being completely direct. “I’m sure your manager/employer cares about you to an extent,” he writes on the topic of keeping a resume updated. “They’ll walk the walk, but if they have to choose between a higher profit margin and laying you offthey’re going to do the latter.” Every reader has something to learn from such a helpful coach.
A wide-ranging, detailed, and extremely useful introduction to work and finances.Pub Date: July 25, 2024
ISBN: 9798334074989
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2024
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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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