A genial, gentle reminder not to take life quite so seriously.
A podcaster/comedy writer extols the virtues of humor.
Duffy cheerfully itemizes some of the many ways in which being able to call on a sense of humor greases the wheels of social interaction in ordinary times and makes life more bearable in the challenging ones, including times of illness, grief, and social oppression. Though Duffy occasionally touches on techniques for crafting and telling a joke—“start with the second biggest laugh” and “funny things come in threes”— his main focus is on allowing humor and laughter to arise naturally in social settings, and learning to laugh at yourself. Each of the chapters includes practical suggestions on how to encourage an attitude of openness to delight: Put away your phone, take social risks, “celebrate the bad.” Frequent goofy footnotes add to the book’s pleasure. Duffy touches on academic studies on subjects such as evolutionary science, and he interviews experts on topics including comic improvisation and Abraham Lincoln’s sense of humor, but he doesn’t get bogged down in the details. The author devotes even more of his attention to one of his fifth-grade students who wrote entertaining reviews of school lunches and a 103-year-old neighbor with “a mischievous streak and a razor-sharp wit.” His light touch makes for a delightfully accessible book. While most readers won’t find much new or surprising information here, Duffy’s down-to-earth presentation offers useful reminders about the importance of mindfulness, compassion, and above all, not taking oneself too seriously. He also, wisely, recognizes that humor is not always a force for good, and devotes a chapter to avoiding using humor to bully, hog attention, or insult oneself. “Do your best not to be an ignorant jerk,” he advises.
A genial, gentle reminder not to take life quite so seriously.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9780385550680
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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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