I'm not sure I would have had the patience to make it through the print version, but I absolutely loved the audiobook. The essays span such a wide range of topics, and John Green's on ever single one of them are so nuanced, intriguing, and often relatable.

THE AUDIOBOOK! John narrates it himself (I find his voice so soothing) & one of my favorite essays was an audio exclusive. I just described this book to someone as a 'pop culture' book, but I think that does it a great disservice. This book is just so much more than that. I actually have not read any of John Green's novels (yet), but I have been following him and his brother Hank (read The Carls!) for a couple years, so I knew going in that John has a way with words. You may flip through the table of contents to read the titles of the essays and think this book sounds rather ordinary, but John is able to take even the most seemingly mundane topics and weave beautiful connections to (the often brutal) humanity. There were several times when I was misty eyed.

I give John Green's book 5 stars.

I really enjoyed this book. John used reviews of random things from present day (or recent history) to share his thoughts on life. His thoughts were different from mine and I found they offered interesting insights. If you're someone whose already gone deeper on the topics of grief and "why are we here" perhaps you'd find it shallower, but I would still recommend it.

3.5 stars

This is my first book by John Green. For many years I stayed away due to the fact that many people seem to really like him as a person, but not find his work compelling. :(

When I saw he published a nonfiction title, better yet..a collection of essay mainly from the podcast he does...I thought this is my chance to see if I enjoy his writing style! ^^

I think this book is personal for him mainly because it was written in the middle of the pandemic.
The subjects he tackles are varied and unique in their own right: from sunsets to favorite bands and places, from sports to the pandemic and mental health, and from important changes at the global scale to a personal journey he needed to put on paper mainly for himself. :)

This book is beautiful, and reading it, I kept imagining his voice and fragile delivery from crash course literature.

In terms of content I loved about a third of essays, liked another, and I was mildly interested in the rest.
Here are some of my favorite chapters: 
-Humanity's Temporal Range
-Halley's Comet
-Lascaux Cave Paintings
-Teddy Bears
-Air-Conditioning
-<b>Sunsets</b>
-<b>Pinguins of Madagascar</b>
-<b>Auld Lang Syne</b>
-<b>Googling Strangers</b>
If you have a copy of the book at hand, you can see that I connected with the first part of the book more...which is not a bad thing. I just vibe with some of the subjects of interest for him, not all. ^_^

I highly recommend this collection of essays if you need something meditative, or are in the mood this reflect on serious subject matters for short periods of time.
In the end, I'm not sure I will ever read more from him, certainly not his earlier work..but a similar project as "The Anthropocene reviewed" will appeal to me.:)
One things is sure...I loved his authorial voice! If you enjoy hearing him talk, give this book a try!

Enjoy

Although I'm a fan of John Green's YA fiction, I really had no interest in reading this book, but my friend kept gushing about it. The first few essays were good and had Green's signature wit and style, but it wasn't until "Lascaux Cave Paintings" that I was truly sold. At that point I started reading many essays aloud to my husband, a history buff, and being able to share in them made them all the richer. Then the collection took a turn and became meaningful and insightful in a way I didn't expect. His experiences with depression made me feel truly seen. I used SO many book darts because Green has a true gift for making meaning of the mundane. He writes lines that just resonate and make me believe in the universal experience of humanity. This collection was inspiring and reminded me that I matter, what I do matters, and how I treat people matters. I gained so much from reading this and wholeheartedly recommend it. 

A beautiful series of essays inspired by the good and the bad of life and humanity. I listened to the audio book which was read by the author. It was quite a good listened and each essay is interesting.

It really does make you fall in love with the world a bit more.

What an absolute fun and enjoyable read.

A selection of the things that I learned while reading this book:
- you should never predict the end of the world, you will almost certainly be wrong
- the tail of Halley's comet extends more than sixty million miles through space
 - are conditioning systems in many buildings are biased to cater to men's temperature preferences
- basically all penicillin in the world descends from a mold found on a cantaloupe (and the scientists ate it after scraping off the mold)
- lawn maintenance creates more carbon dioxide than the lawns can capture
- Monopoly was actually invented by a woman

Before starting this book officially I had already read a single chapter of it about a year ago, the one titled "Auld Lang Syne." I had actually never actively heard of the song (though I am sure I had heard it before passively in a movie or something similar) and I found it so beautiful that I listened to it on repeat and then did a university assignment on it. I too would like to give Auld Lang Syne five stars.

Each first edition book of this title was signed by John Green. He made a video about this on the Youtube channel he shares with his brother Hank, explaining that his signature didn't make books worth more because by now, he has signed so many of them. However, I would like to claim an exception to this in this very instance. While every single book of this first edition was supposed to have a signature, mine has not. Thus, by NOT having a signature I would actually argue that my first edition of this book is worth more than the other ones. Oh how the tables have tabled. I give this book five stars.