An earnest but ultimately superficial manual for the job-search process.
A life coach offers a Christian-centered guide to landing a dream job.
Yang, a self-described “finance guru for Millennials,” has created a guidebook for modern jobseekers. She begins by cataloging her own professional experiences, recalling multiple instances in which she applied for 50 jobs in a single day and received job offers in five days. She shares her unusual professional trajectory, which included working at Domino’s Pizza, doing foot-fetish modeling, bookkeeping, and starting her own financial services business. These experiences all inform her job-seeking philosophy, and she offers many tips here. For example, Yang states that, “Personal branding makes up 50% of your success in landing a job quickly,” and recommends using one’s full name professionally to improve Google search results and “control the narrative” of one’s story. She urges jobseekers to get professional headshots for social media; to employ a graphic designer to create a color palette and typeface for business cards, letterhead, and more; and to choose a “stylish” Zoom background for maximum impact. In addition, the book encourages readers to claim a domain name, create a website, and establish an email address with a custom signature. Blogging, vlogging, and writing books are highlighted as other ways to further elevate one’s brand. In addition, Yang provides a step-by-step overview of how to achieve “All-Star” status on LinkedIn and recommends a company for public-speaking instruction. Other tips for career advancement include developing new skills, embracing feedback, and always going the extra mile at work. Throughout, Yang infuses her advice with Christian theology: “It is in serving others that God provides us unbelievable opportunities.”
Yang’s title doesn’t allude to the book’s heavy religious influences, which may surprise secular jobseekers. Some of the author’s advice is useful, as when she insightfully notes that “Courage feels terrible” and goes on to explain that “Courage is the act of committing yourself to doing it anyway, despite the fear.” However, the book is hampered by several flaws. Some lines, for example, feel clichéd, such as “We can learn and do anything we set our minds to,” and a few chapter titles, such as “Better Managing Your Time for Increased Productivity” and “Doubling Your Productivity by Increasing Typing Speed” feel unnecessarily wordy. The utility of some tips, such as “Whatever you do, be fabulous doing it,” is questionable, and others seem counterproductive, as when she advises readers to submit job applications en masse, but “Don’t bother researching any of the companies. Just apply.” The book also shames sex workers, declaring at one point that “It’s disgusting for a woman” to make a living on OnlyFans. Other lines are puzzling, as when she discounts why a famous person might find it easier to get a job than someone unknown: “Think of all the people who are incredibly famous and well respected in their industry….Every company wants to snatch this person up before someone else. If it’s possible for famous people, why isn’t it possible for you?”
An earnest but ultimately superficial manual for the job-search process.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2023
ISBN: 978-1961039018
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Annie Margarita Yang Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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