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
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
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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