Both a practical and inspirational guide with special appeal for budding musicians.
A songwriter’s guide for those who are more concerned with making meaningful art than with commercial success.
As a recording artist, singer/songwriter, author, and leader of songwriting retreats, Williams has established a fruitful career on the periphery of the mainstream. In her latest book, following What I Found in a Thousand Towns, she distills her wisdom and experience to help others who have similar priorities. She also demonstrates how a great song comes about, how a songwriter develops her artistry, and how a song progresses from initial inspiration into something acceptable and possibly even exceptional. Through examples from her own songwriting and workshopping, Williams shows how a song can start from a familiar chord progression of the sound of certain words, even if the words don’t hold a specific meaning yet. Then there’s a spark of inspiration, for those who are receptive to it, which fuels a creative flame. Williams smoothly describes the process of “listening for cues and clues” to discover the focus of the song, who the narrator is, what a particular combination of verbal sounds and guitar progressions is trying to convey to the songwriter and to potential listeners—and why any of this matters. The author recognizes that there are many hunches and intuitions involved and that experience will help the songwriter learn how much to value the initial inspiration, when to remain true to the voice and when to question it, and how to incorporate feedback from others. Williams also shows how and where songs can make a wrong turn and how to get them back on course. Even those with no musical experience or aspirations will appreciate the author’s illumination of the mechanics of songcraft, and she is consistently encouraging. “However you join music with your lyrics,” she writes, “please, please, just jump over things in this book that don’t relate to your songwriting or that are intimidating in general.”
Both a practical and inspirational guide with special appeal for budding musicians.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-306-92329-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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
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
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