An encouraging, upbeat, and useful call to host parties and make friends.
A debut guide offers a new strategy for meeting people and networking.
Gray admits at the beginning of his book about social gatherings that he doesn’t have the good fortune of being a natural extrovert. “In social situations, I sometimes felt overwhelmed and intimidated,” he writes. “My heart would race, and I’d stutter or say something embarrassing.” Whether it was personal meetings or more business-oriented events, he found himself continuously out of step and disappointed. So he decided, as he puts it, to “bring the party to me” by hosting bashes in his home. Soon, he developed a way to “hack” a social life. He shares the parameters of that hack in these pages, laying out for readers what they should do in order to host truly wonderful parties. He insists these parties are not intended as networking events, but he also makes it clear that networking benefits will almost certainly result. “In the time it takes to watch a movie, you can improve your relationships with a room full of people,” he writes. “It is the most efficient and effective way I’ve found to strengthen many different connections.” In chapters clearly aimed at readers who share his initial social awkwardness, Gray explains the rules of these parties (including name tags for all attendees and clear starting—and stopping—times) and the burdens incumbent on the host, all the while providing examples of successful professionals who have adopted this method and seen positive results. “I created so many new connections,” enthuses Nagina Sethi Abdulla, founder of MasalaBody.com. “I also gained confidence that I’m adding value to my community.”
Gray strikes an effervescently positive tone throughout; his book is almost entirely free of the hard-line battlefield commands that littered its predecessor from decades ago, How To Do It ( 1957) by the legendary party thrower Elsa Maxwell. But in both cases, the host is absolutely the key to the success or failure of the gathering that Gray calls a “structured cocktail party.” He paints a glowingly positive picture of how wonderful an experience those structured cocktail parties can be: “Two hours fly by. Now, new friends who didn’t know anyone when they arrived have met several interesting people whom they genuinely look forward to following up with.” (“I warmly usher people out,” he adds charmingly, “and some are surprised to get home before 10:00 p.m.”) There’s a touchingly earnest element to the way the author leaves nothing to chance. He devotes energetic attention to everything from handling RSVPs (don’t spam people) to managing the right mix of attendees and preparing the space for an influx of guests. He provides innumerable helpful hints and “party pro tips” for prospective hosts, everything from posting little map directions on the stairs (“Almost there! You look great!”) to a wide array of possible icebreakers designed to get people talking and having fun. Anyone who has ever attended a networking event (or a dinner party) will fervently hope that Gray’s idea takes root and becomes universal.
An encouraging, upbeat, and useful call to host parties and make friends.Pub Date: June 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-3007-9
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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