A practical, encouraging guide to creating mindful menus and taking other measures to improve health.
A wellness manual aims to reengineer readers’ relationships to food.
D’Agostino had several spurs to finally get rid of 60 extra pounds: a cousin’s comment, a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis, and an array of health ailments (sleep apnea, knee and lower back pain) that impacted the desire to do any exercise. In this guide, the author outlines the strategies used to shed this weight and become more regularly active, a “plan where you don’t have to count calories, cook too much or shake your booty too hard.” The book’s tips include how to “Shop for Real Food” in order to implement its meal suggestions that are focused on low-carb, low-sugar, and low-fat items and creating “simple, healthy convenience foods for yourself, so you won’t be tempted by those bad processed food temptations anymore.” The manual also advises readers to make and commit to a “Shake Your Booty” list of physical activities that they like to help them move their bodies “in some way almost every day.” Mental health will also flourish as readers “Get High the Natural Way,” including making time to “share a smile or a hug.” The strength of this simple guide is the spirit of the author, who is very relatable (confessing to doughnut and ice cream addictions) and motivational (“The first important strategy is to never blame yourself. Blaming yourself is a negative emotion that will just add more stress to your life and encourage you to eat more than you need to”). Some of the advice is rather challenging, such as having a one-third measuring cup on hand. This is crucial since that is “the exact amount of grain, pasta or starchy vegetable you can eat per day if you choose to.” Still, other suggestions, such as focusing on a treat list of nonfood rewards, supports this book’s ethos that meals “shouldn’t be the only place to find comfort and gratification.”
A practical, encouraging guide to creating mindful menus and taking other measures to improve health.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951188-21-4
Page Count: 95
Publisher: Hallard Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2022
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
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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