A heartfelt and holistic but diffuse and scattershot program for improving your life.
An inspirational guide offers readers advice on taking control of their destinies.
According to Pat, humanity has an integral role to play in the balance of the universe’s energy. That energy sprang into being during the Big Bang, originally assuming the simple, primitive forms of hydrogen but eventually evolving into humankind. “Humanity is an inseparable element of this energy system and is subject to all the laws that govern it,” the author writes. “There is no way out of the Energy System of the Universe; let us call it the Spiritual Energy of the Universe.” In Pat’s conception, the cosmos is in a state of perfect harmony, “an infinite vastness of energy in a state of absolute and perfect balance.” The preservation of that harmony is the guiding principle of all living things, or should be. Humans, he maintains, are the only creatures in this system that possess free will and have the choice either to live in accordance with the laws of the Spiritual Energy of the Universe or to follow their own paths in opposition to these rules, thereby inviting sadness and disappointment. In outlining the various precepts that will help readers to align their lives according to this Spiritual Energy, the author touches on many aspects of life—and death. “Do not fear death,” he advises. “Fear of dying is the first and most important source of negative energy.”
Pat often dispenses sound advice in this ambitious manual, translated from the Polishby Pagett and Oszmianska-Pagett. The author reassures his readers that they don’t always have to be cheerful, for instance—it’s perfectly OK to just yield to a bad day rather than waste energy on fighting it. All people have the right to do what they think is right; the author also tells his readers that they aren’t obliged to react to everything. Such worry-reducing sentiments are comforting, but some of Pat’s assertions are either contradictory or questionable. “Nobody has responsibility for your life other than you,” he writes at one point. At another point, he asserts: “Your destiny depends on your own thoughts,” a statement that will be puzzling to anybody who has ever survived a natural disaster, a dire illness, or even the loss of a job. At other times, he resorts to the kinds of “deep thought” aphorisms that too often fill guides of this type, things like “Would mountains exist if it wasn’t for the valleys?” He attempts to short-circuit any criticism by warning his readers: “Don’t intellectualize or analyze the words in this book.” But authors don’t write books in order for readers to ignore them. Still, Pat delivers several straightforward, useful truisms about the value of blazing your own trail and following your heart when it comes to charting your future. He urges his readers to fill their lives with love and to act only out of love when possible—clear and worthwhile advice. But the audience will have to wade through quite a bit of soup to find those tantalizing croutons.
A heartfelt and holistic but diffuse and scattershot program for improving your life.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-69890-826-7
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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