An uplifting combination of helpful meditative practices and practical how-to guide that encourages readers to start fresh.
Timmins presents an artful blend of flower arranging know-how and inspirational self-help in this nonfiction guide.
Using flower arranging as a form of therapy, the author introduces readers to the positive mental and emotional influences of the natural world. Each chapter tackles a new area of self-improvement, including acceptance, forgiveness, connection, love, gratitude, contribution, vision, alignment, courage, and purpose. The text incorporates personal anecdotes illustrating how Timmins’ previously black-and-white view of the world has changed as she’s gotten older and reminding readers of the simple joys of receiving flowers. Linked with each aspect of self-improvement is a different flower arrangement project that includes all the ingredients and directions readers need to complete it (acceptance pairs with a seasonal bouquet, while forgiveness pairs with a terrarium). Gorgeous color photos show what the arrangements might ideally look like, although the author insists that flower styling can and should be highly individualized: “This is the true therapy of arranging flowers. The flowers will guide you by their shape, size, colour, texture and directional flow, which are all elements of design. Go with their flow and you will step into your state of flow.” Chapters also include guided meditations, including an exercise in which one envisions one’s heart as a flower full of petals that slowly unfurl with each breath. Engaging flower trivia is scattered throughout, such as the fact that a rose vibrates at a frequency of 320 MHz (compared to, say, an apple that vibrates at around 15 MHz). All of this information—therapeutic, botanical, scientific—fuses into a joyful and engaging text that even self-proclaimed “black thumbs” will likely find irresistible. Written with a warm, friendly, open-hearted style, it truly feels as though Timmins is a good friend whose mere presence (and frequent words of wisdom) helps make the day brighter. The jaw-dropping flower arrangements don’t hurt either.
An uplifting combination of helpful meditative practices and practical how-to guide that encourages readers to start fresh.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2021
ISBN: 9781982291631
Page Count: 114
Publisher: BalboaPressAU
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2023
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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