An immersive discussion with an appealing message to explore one’s own personal path to spiritual enlightenment.
Skye, an adult industry actor, aerial acrobat, and yoga teacher, shares his path to higher consciousness in this memoir.
“Traveling from life to life, breathing the air / Vibrating like so, of music and light,” concludes this book’s initial and eponymous poem, one of many that Skye has included in this volume, which he describes as “the teachings of my current life and an essay about spirituality in application in all spheres of life on earth under the seven skies.” Chapters kick off with translated Sanskrit mantras and touch down on a variety of spiritual topics while also unfolding Skye’s autobiography. Skye reports experiencing psychic abilities and affinities from the time he was a child in Canada, but it took fuller awakening, aided by a coach, for him to transition from a visual merchandising career to his role as a “spiritual acrobat porn daddy” by his 30s. Topics include the interconnectedness of all things, astral traveling, and past lives, with “my body of light taking the shape of each of my incarnations: forty-two fully achieved lives and 111 total.” Skye also details the mechanics and philosophy of “sacred sexuality,” asserting that, “until we see sex for the true divine experience that it is, there cannot be a shift of consciousness, period.” Clocking in at 700 pages, the text is initially rather daunting. Yet Skye’s accessible, conversational tone soon draws the reader into this intriguing and wide-ranging narrative. His descriptions of performing yoga and acrobatics and “the wonderful thrill of beautiful lovemaking” effectively illustrate the joy and power of the mind-body connection. Readers should be warned, as Skye himself acknowledges, that some of the sexual content included is “really graphic.” The biggest takeaway of this book is the exhortation to keep an open heart and mind, with Skye noting, “Let the universe guide you into what is best for you without judgment.”
An immersive discussion with an appealing message to explore one’s own personal path to spiritual enlightenment.Pub Date: May 25, 2023
ISBN: 979-8765241950
Page Count: 700
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2023
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
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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