I added this book to my TBR on Aug 11, 2014 (Reading the TBR!), but couldn’t find a copy anywhere. I finally decided to just use an Audible credit on the audio version, and listened to it. Honestly, it was good but not really worth a 5 year wait. But at least that knocked one book off my TBR!
“When you see people in terms of race or religion, that’s when the trouble starts. I don’t understand why people work so hard at pointing out our differences; we should be celebrating the things we have in common.”
This book is a mix of autobiography — Mac’s childhood, his family, his rise to fame — and advice. He talks about how to become the most confident version of yourself, while still maintaining respect and love for others. A lot of his advice kind of boils down to “be a man”, but he balances that with stories about church, and his mother, and how he’s raising his own kids. The title, in fact, comes from his desire to make his mother happy. She died of cancer when he was sixteen, but his goal well before then was that she would never cry again because she’d be busy laughing. Mac also does not shy away from the mistakes he made on his road to success, when just about everything took a backseat to getting where he wanted to be.
This book only rated about 3 stars for me, and a lot of that came from his excellent performance. I think he just needed some help writing it — the book sounds very much like someone doing stand up, which is good and bad. Good in that it seems very natural and from the heart, especially listening to him perform it. But bad in taht it meanders, loses focus a lot, and probably could have benefited from a professional writer’s assistance.