A charming, easy-to-read fable providing useful pointers on personal finance management.
In this finance-focused tale, a South African ex-athlete is led on a journey to uncover the secrets to achieving lasting wealth.
Growing up in rural South Africa, Ash has the good fortune of being skilled at sports and securing the heart of local girl Suraya. He becomes a rugby star in the big city and lives a high-spending lifestyle, dropping his hometown sweetheart. Then disaster strikes: Ash’s hamstrings go out and he’s forced out of the game. In debt and despair on a plane returning home, he meets the mysterious TK, who tells him about the “money fountain” and how there are core principles through which one can achieve and sustain financial security. Destiny intervenes once again, however, with Ash losing TK’s contact information while leaving the plane. Ash returns home, reunites with Suraya and begins to raise a family, but he soon falls prey to debilitating financial schemes. That’s all apparently part of the plan, however, with TK eventually reappearing in Ash’s life, leading him to a series of mentors who reveal the key tips—e.g., routinely save 10 percent of your income, invest in an account that compounds and rewards you with either interest or a dividend—that put Ash on track to “conscious wealth” and help him “pay it forward” to become a successful TK-like guide himself. Authors Van Eyden, an economics professor, and Wells, a South African business entrepreneur, have written a gently humorous tale that outlines rather obvious but important aspects of fiscal responsibility. Their money examples are based on South African currency, however, which may confuse some readers. Also, some of their suggestions may cause skepticism: Surely it is not so easy, for example, to find “a stock that earns 15 percent or more.” The authors’ use of fate and “Destiny” (as an actual character) also seem at odds with their philosophy that one can and should try to control the financial forces in one’s life. Still, the smooth-flowing narrative may be an effective way to present dry economic topics to general audiences.
A charming, easy-to-read fable providing useful pointers on personal finance management.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492812098
Page Count: 160
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2014
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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