Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey.

Narrated by Matthew McConaughey.

Released 20th October 2020 by Audible.

From the cover:

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 50 years, been trying to work out its riddle for 42, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last 35. 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 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 realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too. Good luck.

The audiobook now includes an exclusive interview with Matthew McConaughey which was recorded during his book tour in 2021.

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When actor Matthew McConaughey hit his milestone 50th birthday, he decided the time was ripe to review his diaries from the last 35 years and distil all he has learned about life into a memoir. Greenlights is the result, and as memoirs go it is rather an unconventional one. Instead of simply being an account of his life and times, he also offers a hefty slice of life coaching advice about how to deal with the challenges that come your way - opening up to life's 'greenlights' to find fulfilment and happiness.

McConaughey narrates this book himself, and his enthusiasm carries you along through the stories he tells of his early life, career, and family, interspersed with cheerleading references to this things he calls 'bumper stickers' (basically mottos to live by) and 'prescriptions' about how to achieve happiness. 

For a good portion of this audio book, I thought this rather charming, especially since his voice is like Texan honey, but after a while I found myself wanting more about his acting roles (there is actually very little detail here apart from one or two of his more famous parts), and a bit less of the life coaching - so much so that I put the audio book to one side for a good few months and have only just completed it.

If you like your memoirs to be full of inspirational advice rather than a string of acting anecdotes, then you will find plenty here to enjoy, and there is a lot to make you ponder on how you live your life - even if you do not always agree with his philosophy or beliefs. However, it does not quite hit the mark for me, given that I was here for the acting nitty gritty, even with Matthew's dulcet tones. I think this is a book that will divide the crowd!

Greenlights is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audio formats.

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.

In 2009, Matthew and his wife, Camila, founded the just keep livin Foundation, which helps at-risk high school students make healthier mind, body, and spirit choices. In 2019, McConaughey became a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as Minister of Culture/M.O.C. for the University of Texas and the City of Austin. McConaughey is also brand ambassador for Lincoln Motor Company, an owner of the Major League Soccer club Austin FC, and co-creator of his favorite bourbon on the planet, Wild Turkey Longbranch.