An often inspiring interactive guide to rewriting one’s life whose core message can seem too simplistic at times.
Business coach Zuber shows how to use reflection and writing to create one’s best life in this aspirational book.
The author opens with his own rock-bottom anecdote: He wrote a letter to a version of himself 10 years in the future. For him, that act helped restore his home, relationships, and career, and composing these letters eventually became a technique he used in coaching workshops. “Every life is authored twice. First in your imagination. Then, in your reality,” he asserts. The book contrasts traditional goal-setting (which measures what you do) versus the 10-year letter-writing technique (which focuses on who you are becoming). Because “ten years will pass no matter what you do,” the author insists on being focused and intentional. He warns about the “Default Self,” defined as “the ancient part of you wired for survival, not success” that clings to familiarity, certainty, belonging, and comfort. The author provides prompts to help identify strengths, illuminate values, and write a mission statement for life. Zuber encourages incorporating adventure into life, offering suggestions like traveling solo, learning new skills, or trying something outrageous. The book’s final section, which focuses on writing the letter, incorporates details on categories such as home, relationships, spirituality, well-being, and career. Zuber concludes with a reminder to “let your life become the letter.” This is one of many examples of Zuber’s easy-to-follow road map for the future. The book effectively imparts a sense of urgency in lines like “Each day that passes is one less chance to create the life you are worthy of living.” Neuroscience-based concepts like “The Renewal Cycle,” which describes the necessity of remembering, releasing, reconnecting, reclaiming, and rebuilding, demonstrate that lasting change requires repetition. Catchy mottos abound, including “It’s not about perfection. It’s about direction”; tools like “The Future Self Quiz” allow readers to assess where they are and measure progress over time. However, the book’s central premise is simple enough that it doesn’t quite necessitate a book-length discussion.
An often inspiring interactive guide to rewriting one’s life whose core message can seem too simplistic at times.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2026
ISBN: 9798891389861
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2026
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
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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