An empathetic approach to personal health that strikes an effective balance between inspiration and practicality.
A debut author details her meandering path toward weight loss and well-being.
Dedicating the book to anyone who has followed a fad diet or detox routine—“the starters, the failers, the do-it-againers”—Walker blends her own health journey with doable tips that defy the standard advice of counting calories and performing rote exercise routines. The author shares her lifelong struggle with body image and unhealthy habits that “were familiar but toxic.” By her 30s, Walker was on prescription medicine to manage her blood pressure and high cholesterol; by her 40s, the hormonal shifts associated with perimenopause and menopause led to constant weight gain, brain fog, and body aches. She hit “rock bottom,” and a life-threatening kidney complication galvanized her to reevaluate her yo-yo approach to diet and exercise. She found that by listening to her body’s signals rather than the rules of pop dieticians, she managed to lose 140 pounds—and find inner peace and fulfillment. Central to her approach is awareness of the mind-body connection; she emphasizes breathwork, meditation, and “joyful movement” (exercise should never be a grueling form of punishment but “a joyful expression of life”). She offers a step-by-step guide to Body Scan Meditation (“start by focusing on your toes”), which teaches readers how to tune into their bodies. Similarly, she eschews a draconian attitude toward food, and instead urges readers to find “the ease and joy of preparing and savoring nutritious meals” with fresh ingredients. The work includes a wealth of engaging, useful tips, and Walker uses a hummingbird’s silhouette, which appears on the cover and throughout the book, as a visual reminder that healthy living resembles a hummingbird’s movement (with midair pauses and sudden directional shifts).
An empathetic approach to personal health that strikes an effective balance between inspiration and practicality.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798891328174
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2025
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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