A warm, valuable, and empathetic guide to forging personal alignments that will rejuvenate lives.
A debut manual offers a blueprint for creating new patterns in work and life.
Keller Wood opens her book by discussing an extremely relevant topic in 21st-century America: discovering the right work-life balance. She suggests that this balance is not only impossible to find, but also illusory—either people are ignoring work-related things they should be doing, or they’re neglecting their lives in favor of their jobs, particularly when their occupations involve helping others. But “having work that is of service to the world,” Keller Wood writes, “does not require a life of monastic self-sacrifice.” The way she proposes to avoid these kinds of problems is to abandon the idea of balance and instead concentrate on “alignment.” The key to this concept is the trick of seeing life as a mosaic whose innumerable little pieces will realign themselves in response to changes in employment, family, health, and other factors. Each piece supports the others and gives the mosaic long-term durability. Drawing on her experience in the Montessori school of teaching, Keller Wood stresses this flexibility and the “interleaving” (“resting from one kind of work” and switching to another) that’s characteristic of the educational method. The author asks readers: “If your body is weary from physical work, is there a more abstract problem you could puzzle over?” Keller Wood never avoids the “hard truth” that all the pieces of the mosaic she describes are temporary. Nonetheless, she writes with grace and genuine enthusiasm about her conviction that her readers can overcome the situation where “we have a lot on our plate, but we’re feeling less connected to the meaning behind it” and discover personal alignments that will improve their lives. Her lively book is full of vivid narrative examples drawn from her own life and the experiences of others as well as helpful writing exercises and “reflection questions” designed to make her less of a teacher and more of a Montessori-style “guide.” Teachers at all levels will consider the book useful, and harried, overworked readers will find it a welcome call to slow down and take stock.
A warm, valuable, and empathetic guide to forging personal alignments that will rejuvenate lives.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781774584859
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Page Two
Review Posted Online: June 27, 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 sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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