By turns simplistic, elegiac, and illuminative.
A heartfelt, artful manifesto focused on living fully and authentically.
Poet Daley-Ward addresses readers directly and speaks for them collectively, in addition to sharing her own experiences, in an earnest effort to offer them a reflection of themselves as well as their potential. “We must know,” she begins, “there are no truths but the ones that we arrive at on our own.” This admittedly indirect path—what she describes as “the great work of meeting yourself”—defines this book. The author includes exercises and affirmations designed to help readers examine and redefine “what we think life is all about…what we think work is, and to release the idea that we must suffer and struggle for the things that we want.” She addresses feelings such as restlessness, dissatisfaction, anxiety, depression, insecurity, isolation, romance, self-compassion, gratitude, and grief, proposing solutions such as simplifying, writing down one’s dreams, and taking time every day away from the phone. She suggests myriad practices of self-inquiry to attune readers to their inner wisdom and joy. “If you are not spiritually fit right now,” she warns, “running anywhere else is pointless. The next place will never save you.” Other tidbits of advice include: “Just be more you: that’s the solution”; “We should always be letting go”; “You have to save yourself and worry about the rest later”; “Expression is relief, and surefire medicine.” Throughout this slim book, the author strikes a balance between self-help and confession. For example, when she shares her own knowledge that she can never look to anything external as a way out of herself—although that doesn’t stop her from trying—she opens up space for readers to reflect on their own accounts of avoidance and/or real desires. She creates connections, much like a circuit closing, and invites her audience on a voyage of self-discovery.
By turns simplistic, elegiac, and illuminative.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-14-313560-9
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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