Sobering relationship advice yet wickedly funny at times.
A debut dating guide targets widows and divorced women.
Koprucki, who suffered the death of her spouse after “more than” 29 years of marriage, writes with candor in this manual about the sometimes-unimaginable pain of loss. She begins by discussing the unique challenge of facing holidays and special occasions alone. The author suggests establishing new traditions, engaging in travel, and focusing on others to deflect melancholy and depression. Her advice is compassionate yet blunt: “You will never be able fully to divide him from you, so stop trying and let it flow.…There is no such thing as absolute closure.” The bulk of the book pertains to living with loss and getting on with life, largely as it relates to developing a relationship with another man. Much of the volume centers on how to reenter the dating scene; Koprucki shares her thoughts about appearance, concentrating on hair, makeup, weight, and clothes. Chapters concerning where men congregate and the three basic male types (“TradeDown, Jungleboy, and TradeUp”) are enlightening as well as highly amusing. Jungleboy, writes the author, “is a real man with street smarts.…Jungleboy is a participant, not a spectator.…He is at home in the vortex of conflict.” Several observations of masculine behavior are insightful; for example, a list of key attributes highlights “how does he treat waiters and waitresses? Or anyone whom he mistakenly perceives as being beneath him in social and/or career status? This tells who he is.” Koprucki spends considerable time covering the ins and outs of online dating with an emphasis on do’s and don’ts. Later chapters concern budding relationships with men—communicating via email, text, or phone; interacting with family and friends; sustaining a relationship; and gauging the potential for marriage. Still, portions of the book speak to female independence, such as a chapter that encourages women to fix mechanical and electronic items. Rather than exuding doom and gloom, the author’s sense of humor is liberally sprinkled throughout the guide. This lightens up what is undoubtedly a heart-wrenching time for women who are suddenly single.
Sobering relationship advice yet wickedly funny at times.Pub Date: June 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5043-1418-3
Page Count: 138
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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