The Anthropocene Reviewed

I've never listened to the podcast, but I thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook. Through a series of seemingly unrelated essay topics, Green tells a story of what it is to be a reflective person living in the Anthropocene – the age of humans. Each essay ends in a rating out of five stars, which is indicative of how we tend view the world around us: how it adds to our singular life, our singular perspective, our singular enjoyment.

As the essays build – and they range from “Air Conditioning” to “CNN” to “The Notes App” to “Sunsets” – we learn about these topics, and the author, and the painful and desperate and hopeful times of the pandemic. The act of reviewing exposes so much of ourselves and our emotional states, and in that way, this is more like a memoir than anything else. Each new chapter beings a new topic and is refreshed with new anecdotes, so it never feels stale. That, and some of the writing is so good, and so relevant and powerful, you'll have to stop to rewind/reread and turn the phrases over a few more times and let them dissolve like a hard candy in your mouth. I learned a lot about a whole variety of random things, but what I really appreciated about this book is that it felt like a warm, friendly hug at the end of a really hard time (the pandemic being the hard time).

If I have any complaints, it's only that some of the chapters were less interesting or vulnerable than others, but writing that out feels like such a minor complaint. This is a pandemic book that gets at the pandemic better than any other book I've read (/listened to), because it's so rich in context that doesn't even read like context until you realize everything is context.

Now I'm waxing. I give this book 4.5 stars.

Not quite what I expected; but then again, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I associate the word “anthropocene” with climate change because that's the context which I've most often heard it in... but I know that John Green isn't a climate scientist so wasn't exactly expecting this to be a book about climate change either. Turns out, it's about a lot of things! I suppose it's somewhat of a memoir, but written through reviews on various things in life. For example, there's a chapter on Diet Dr Pepper, another one on the song You'll Never Walk Alone, and a chapter on Indianapolis.

Overall I thought it was an enjoyable and light read, and I got to learn a few things about John Green as well.

3.75/5

I read this book on the brink of the third wave of COVID-19, thoroughly exhausted and otherwise despondent about humanity as a whole.

I really couldn't have picked a better time to read it - these mini essays reminded me about the beauty and fear and anger and joy and inevitability that comes with being human and existing at this time, on this planet, in our tiny corner of the universe.

I leave these pages with a flicker of hope, and a lighter heart. Thank you, John Green, for reminding me to feel everything instead of numbing myself to it - to dwell in nature and appreciate the little moments and linger in the time I have with the people around me.