Book Review of
Green Lights
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.”
Lynn's Review
Greenlights is Matthew McConaughey sharing his life story: what he went through, what he learned, and how it changed him. It was published in 2020.
There was so much about this book I loved and so much that I didn’t. There are some great thoughts and lessons about life, but it is mixed in with so much language and crudeness that it made the book extremely challenging for me to get through. The book was honest and raw, but not always in a good way. Some details in life are best left untold.
I listened to this on audiobook, which is probably the only reason I finished it. It took me several months of listening to it on and off to get through it. Matthew McConaughey did the audio for the book, and it was amazing. If he ever needs a job, he could totally narrate audiobooks. I would probably listen to just about anything he narrated. However, Greenlights just wasn’t for me. I wish I could recommend this one, but the language and crudeness were just too much for me.