Book Review #139: ‘Greenlights’ by Matthew McConaughey

‘Greenlights’ by Matthew McConaughey (C) Aishwary Mehta.

The story behind this photograph – Bookmark for my Kindle 😛 with one of my favourite quotes from this book.

Author – Matthew McConaughey | Genre – Autobiography

Publishing House – Crown Publishing

Source – Purchased | ASIN – B086823SWK

Published in – October 2020

Format – Kindle eBook | Pages – 288

Quote from the book I Liked –

‘I have a lot of proof that the world is conspiring to make me happy.’ (Page no. 8)

*Important take from the book* (New segment) –

‘Too many options can make a tyrant out of any of us, so we should get rid of the excess in our lives that keep us from being more of ourselves.’ (Page no. 49)

Stars – 5 Stars

Plot Summary –

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.
Hopefully, it’s a medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It’s a love letter. To life.
It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights—and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.
Good luck.

About the Author –

Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey is a married man, a father of three children, and a loyal son and brother. He considers himself a storyteller by occupation, believes it’s okay to have a beer on the way to the temple, feels better with a day’s sweat on him, and is an aspiring orchestral conductor.

My Review –

This book is a gem. I didn’t know about this book or even thought such a book was being written. But all thanks to a friend who recommended that I watch the movie ‘The Gentleman’ by Guy Ritchie. Yes, like everyone, I’ve to know Matthew from his several movies and the most significant one being ‘Interstellar’. But this book came in as a surprise read for me. As I rarely indulge in Biographies (which I should more, but only of unique personalities I guess). I was reading Karma by Sadhguru and was stuck with an Interview between Sadhguru and Matthew. That’s where I go to know about this book. And I ordered one on my Kindle immediately.

This is not just another biography that tells the surface of one’s life but a more profound, deep and raw conversation within it. And glad that this book is raw. Matthew wrote this book as if he is being in conversation with its reader. As if he himself is narrating this book. Throughout his life, he carried notebooks with him (the one made of Paper :P) and wrote like Journal entries in them. Like I suppose we all use to do. But to compile it all into one singular, the well-articulated book is another phenomenal act. He wrote about all that which was needed to be heard by the reader and not all non-sensical things which mattered less to a general reader. He wrote – ‘I’m not perfect: no, I step in shit all the time & recognize it when I do. I’ve just learned how to scrap it off my boots and carry on.’ Like this is what a reader whats to hear. A simple connection, a feeling of being a commoner and not some superstar stuff. He wrote about his wild adventures, his wet dreams (No not in a sexual context but the dreams which felt like a divine commotion to him). And damn he followed those dreams, and chose to act, chose to take the challenge and came a changed person altogether. I totally loved the part of bumpersticker thing.

In his words –
“I’ve always loved bumper stickers, so much so that I’ve stuck bumper to sticker and made them one word, bumpersticker. They’re lyrics, one-liners, quick hitters, unobtrusive personal preferences that people publicly express. They’re cheap and they’re fun. They don’t have to be politically correct because, well, they’re just bumperstickers. From the font they’re in, to the colour scheme, to the word or words they say, a bumpersticker tells you a lot about the person behind the wheel in front of you. Their political views, if they’ve got a family or not, if they’re free spirits or conformists, funny or serious, what kind of pets they have, what kind of music they like, even what their religious beliefs might be. Over the last fifty years, I’ve been collecting my bumperstickers. Some I’ve seen, some I’ve heard, some I stole, some I dreamed, some I said. Some are funny, some are serious, but they all stuck with me…because that’s what bumperstickers do. I’ve included some of my favourites in this book.”

And yeah these stuck with me as well. How sometimes such silly things that you do and thought that only you did in the entire universe are later revealed to be done by several others. And that is how you connect with them. And that’s how I connected with this book. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to those readers who firstly, recognise Matthew and secondly to those who want to know how to turn – RedLights of life into GreenLights.

What I liked – Everything it offers.

What could’ve been better – Can’t get enough of bumperstickers.

Writing Style – Simple, deep and raw.

Conclusion – It inspires and keeps it true to the reality of life.

14th BOOK of 2021 (183 books read overall)

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Review of my previously read books –

Book Review: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Book Review #136: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Book Review #130: Kratu: A Novel by Samarpan