A sharp, sometimes witty, often helpful map for pointing your life in the direction of happiness.
Romero’s motivational guide aims to put readers on the road to happiness.
The author, like millions of other people around the world enduring the global pandemic, had a horrible 2020. Here she tells the story of how she bounced back and offers lessons for others trying to get back on track. In the period covered by the text, the divorced Romero experienced a new romance that quickly ended in infidelity, the loss of her job, and the death of her father from Covid-19. Though the author doesn’t like the term “self-help,” this is essentially a self-help book, full of tips to help hone the mind, body, and soul. Each chapter includes what Romero calls a “happiness check,” including exercises to help the reader achieve happiness. The first happiness check includes a deep-breathing tutorial, an exercise to help the reader feel empathy for someone who has wronged them, and guidance for developing a personal affirmation. Other topics include retraining your brain to be happy, staying resilient, maintaining gratitude and faith, practicing grace, setting goals, and finding a purpose. The author holds a degree in psychology and asserts that all of her advice is supported by clinical research—she backs this up with a number of citations that lend credibility to her arguments. At the same time, the book is enjoyable; Romero’s a sharp, straightforward writer. Sometimes, though, she tries a bit too hard: The book is littered with gratuitous pop culture references (Sharknado, J. Lo., Survivor, Oprah, Judge Judy, Pete Davidson), making Romero seem at times a bit like the mom who wants to be cool around her kids’ friends. She also seems to think she’s being relatable with her use of expletives, which is constant (“F*ck you, 2020. You seriously kicked my ass”). There’s nothing really wrong with that; it’s just that, coming from an adult professional with grown children, it can appear calculated and patronizing. This should not deter the curious, however—this guide is filled with information that just might help the most unhappy of us.
A sharp, sometimes witty, often helpful map for pointing your life in the direction of happiness.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781647425890
Page Count: 264
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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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