A welcome self-help book that aims to maximize happiness by gauging one’s emotional and financial needs.
A former global asset manager presents a framework for finding purpose and achieving personal and professional happiness.
Hsin had a successful career in international investments and a life of conspicuous consumption that left him feeling hollow. It was only after becoming a father that he realized that he had “emotional baggage” that he didn’t want to pass on to his children. He found that his youth as a Cambodian refugee in the United States, when he was teased by his peers for his secondhand clothes and meal vouchers, affected him more deeply than he’d realized. He later learned that self-worth shouldn’t be tied to a job but to one’s core values, and that true, lasting happiness is rooted in service—whether it’s to God, to family, or to strangers. This well-structured book is a result of Hsin’s self-development journey and is intended as a roadmap. It’s split into three sections—“Happiness,” “Income,” and “Integration”—and it explores how to identify core values; how to prepare for a changing work environment; how to pursue strategies for financial independence; and, finally, how to bridge the “passion gap” (“Most feel the need to choose between what they define as ‘passion’ and their need or desire to earn a decent living”). This is done, the author argues, by understanding one’s specific skills and balancing them against the amount of money one needs for a preferred lifestyle. In these pages, Hsin provides his readers with an accessible framework that they’ll find easy to understand and implement, and it provides an engaging mix of personal anecdotes, citedresearch, and philosophy to support the author’s basic premises. A series of exercises at the end of each chapter will challenge readers to reflect upon lessons and work to put them into practice. People who feel directionless, or who struggle to find a sense of self-worth outside the workplace, are likely to find valuable insights here.
A welcome self-help book that aims to maximize happiness by gauging one’s emotional and financial needs.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2024
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 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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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