A rather simple but kindly delivered strategy for pursuing one’s dreams.
Johnson urges readers to hack their lunch breaks to achieve unrealized dreams in this self-help book.
The author opens by describing her dissatisfaction with a previous job, which involved researching and creating psychology tests, and how she began noting the gray sameness of employees’ workspaces. She soon articulated a wish that everyday people could “feel proud of themselves…for making something quietly remarkable happen nearly every day.” In this book, she focuses on trying to help others make better use of their lunch breaks by adopting her titular “Box Lunch Lifestyle.” Specifically, she encourages people to spend that 30-minute break eating nourishing, homemade food and then doing a meaningful personal activity—a purposeful, restorative action that enables growth. Johnson doesn’t provide recipes or food restrictions, but she does share simple tips and tricks for preparation (“If you’re cooking meat or soup, get it started first so you can chop vegetables at the same time”) and urges readers to eat slowly. For the activity portion, Johnson urges readers to work on what she calls a “Second-Place Dream”: “quiet aspirations” that “you probably don’t tell other people about, but they are an essential part of what makes you the whole, meant-to-be You.” She references author Gretchen Rubin’s observation that people need to build, create, learn, and help to be happy and offers prompts to help readers think about their Second-Place Dream. There’s a kind warning against “sneaky quitting” (“quitting before you even start”) and making excuses not to try because of other commitments. Johnson refers to the works of many other popular self-help authors, including Michael Pollan, Cal Newport, and James Clear. However, one wishes that there were strong, evidence-based data for her specific strategy. Throughout, the author relates her new, improved lunch strategies to boxing, a pastime that she came to later in life; at times, the link to the sport feels tenuous, but at other moments, it helps in demonstrating specific lessons. The book’s introduction feels overlong, but there are some good ideas and encouraging words throughout.
A rather simple but kindly delivered strategy for pursuing one’s dreams.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2022
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 221
Publisher: Traction Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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