alright, alright, alright
“Now, twenty-eight years later, those words follow me everywhere. People say them. People steal them. People wear them on their hats and T-shirts. People have them tattooed on their arms. And I love it. It’s an honor. Because those three words are the very first words I said on the very first night of a job I had that I thought might be nothing but a hobby, but it turned into a career.”
Rating: 4.5/5
Genres: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Personal Development
Book Description (from Goodreads): From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction
I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges – how to get relative with the inevitable – you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”
So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.
Review: I didn’t think to read this book, I’m not a celebrity memoir person but then I heard Matthew speaking on two podcasts I regularly listen to (Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard + Sibling Revelry with Kate and Oliver Hudson) and I was really intrigued! McConaughey is a master storyteller….and these are very original stories. Be prepared to laugh, a lot.
I learned so much about him, things you would never know if you only know him from his RomCom days. His journey is fascinating and he is so much more than you expect. He is an adventurer, a philosopher and one hell of a go-getter. I read this book, in a physical format…I am sure it will be amazing via audio but the book is filled with images and notes from over the years. It puts a nice spin on the reading experience.
Check it out!
Love,
A
All in with A 
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