A To Z Book Review: Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey

1/2

My letter “G” pick for the A To Z Challenge was GREENLIGHTS by Matthew McConaughey. The second thing you need to know about this book is that it’s not exactly your normal memoir, and at times it is one wild ride. The first (and most important) thing you need to know is that Matthew McConaughey is a storyteller. This isn’t what he does. It’s who he is down to his DNA.

He’s been keeping journals for most of his life, and when he turned 50 he took an extended vacation to a remote place in the desert of New Mexico (Yay for my home state!) and read them through, pulling out stories, experiences, hard lessons and bright new beginnings and shaping them into this pseudo-memoir. As he so beautifully puts it, “life is your resume on the way to your eulogy.”

That brings us to the title. Greenlights are exactly what they appear. A greenlight means go, advance, you have permission to proceed, and Matthew talks about the inevitability of red lights, the importance of yellow lights, and how to reroute or time your life better to get more greenlights. It’s not a self-help book. This is just his life philosophy which boils down essentially to “go for it.” Proceed. You have permission to move yourself forward – but expect that lights can change and that’s not always a bad thing.

All in all, this was an enjoyable book with some vivid and often hilarious stories, peppered with a stream-of-consciousness full of life wisdom. That stream of consciousness rambled a bit too long in places for me, and I have no idea how this audiobook passed ACX standards for Audible when McConaughey is literally yelling the chapter titles and booming out words during exciting places in his anecdotes. Great performances, but hard on the ears and volume controls. For that, I’m giving this four and a half out of five stars.