A kindly and crystal-clear program of advice for managing money.
A no-nonsense and comprehensive guide to achieving financial harmony.
The latest from podcaster, debt adviser, and professional speaker Kelly, the author of Get the Hell Out of Debt (2021), revolves around a central conceit that one should have “a complete willingness to be vulnerable…when it comes to your money…whether you are solo, shacked up, or signed-on-the-dotted-lined.” She presents readers with a barrage of tests they may take in order to assess not only their financial state, but also their financial frame of mind, which she assigns to a particular “block”: the Lack Block (“I tend to react to financial stress instead of anticipating or dissipating it”), the Worthiness Block (“I lack confidence when it comes to money and other areas of my life”), the Stress Block (“I constantly think about money or the lack thereof”), which is probably the most heavily populated block, and a few others. In Kelly’s view, it’s the misalignment between blocks—romantic partners “living” in different financial neighborhoods, as it were—that gives rise to the sort of financial stress she describes in these pages, and she carefully lays out how to bring these neighborhoods together. Her tone throughout is funny and slangy, with pop-culture references and humorous asides, as when she recalls an embarrassing moment involving the 1997 horror film Anaconda while making a point about giving one’s partner space to grow and change. She’s keenly aware that the subject of money is inherently worrying, so she wisely keeps her tone correspondingly light. Nonetheless, there’s a refreshingly hard-edged clarity to much of her advice, and a great deal of it will be useful even to people who aren’t in committed relationships. As she points out, her book isn't meant to defend or attack such commitment but to help readers find a sense of financial peace.
A kindly and crystal-clear program of advice for managing money.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781637587799
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
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