I don't much like John Green's fiction. I don't actively DISlike it, but it always seems to be a bit too light on the plot and characterization end and too heavy handed on the philosophical end. They're fine if not a bit heady, but John Green was made for nonfiction. We love his Crash Courses, his YouTube videos, his real life advocacy, and his podcasts. And this is that. Even down to its cadence and organization, this is just John Green having a highly consumable conversation with the reader that also helps them feel more encouraged about this life, even despite the many moments that suggest we should be panicking, even despite the occasional, poorly-veiled social advocacy moments.. He delivers a peacful philosophy despite it all. This is officially a new favorite book of mine. I need to go get a physical copy now.

While I don't include audiobook performance in my star rating of a book itself, I have the unique experience here of being able to critique the same person twice. Because John Green is an incredibly gifted speaker, and because I believe that audiobooks voiced by the author themselves have the potential to be the best of their kind, there's nothing about this narration that didn't hit the mark. I give John Green reading his own book the Anthropocene Reviewed... 5 stars.

A very sweet, hopeful, informative read. Went in expecting some fun information and tidbits, ended up getting more of a memoir of an amazing author (which just so happened to be packaged in stories about The Hall of Presidents and Diet Dr. Pepper). Great audiobook, beautifully read by John Green, and very easy to put down and pick back up as needed. Realistic about anxiety and the struggles of living through COVID while also being hopeful.

This book is an enigmatic ode to life in the form of essays written by famed author John Green. They consider the Anthropocene which is  the current geological age (for example your Anthropocene is whatever you live through). 

These essays are incredibly moving at points, they can make you laugh and cry as well as provide fun snippets of information you never knew. Throughout them all John often references back to his personal experiences with his mental health which is incredibly written and moving to those who can relate.  

As a burns victim myself one which stuck with me was “googling strangers” which circles around his time as a chaplain in a hospital when a young burns victim came in. He lived years not knowing this kids fate but eventually googled him and was relieved to see the child survived and grew up to live a fulfilling life and as a victim of similar injuries it was moving to see someone similar mentioned and written not as inspiration porn but to show progress and growth despite barriers you may face. 

Overall I was suprised how much I loved this book and will definitely return to it in future. 

I have read (and enjoyed) Turtles All the Way Down, and coming to John Green’s nonfiction in these essays definitely helped me understand where the protagonist with her obsessive thoughts came from.
 
Of the 49 essays that are in the audiobook, I genuinely enjoyed 3 of them and was surprised by another 3. For the rest of the time, it felt like random musings and wanderings in Green’s head. He writes about a wide spectrum of disparate topics, tells the historical context, and ties it to some aspect of the human experience that is usually pretty disturbing and depressing. Especially in the audiobook, his anxiety and despair about the human situation comes out in most of the essays. There were few essays that reflected on the high points of the human experience, and a lot of the essays went dark in unexpected ways that would lead to despair with no solution. Basically I felt like I was inside his anxious brain for 11 hours and it makes me wonder how he even handles his own brain. 

Generally, this book was too long and felt all over the place—if it was shorter with a more selective choice of essays that related to each other in a more explicit way, maybe it would have been more enjoyable. 

This is my first John Green book experience, but not my first experience of him. My first experience involve my boyfriend introducing me to VlogBrothers when talking about fond pre-college memories. I have since married this boyfriend and in turn he successfully made me a Nerdfighter. But I was still a jock at heart and reading was still off the table until this year when, as Green puts it, my entire life turned into a "What's the Point?" game.
Read this if you want to learn about the author, the man who has been present since before YouTube and now emerging from the "post" Covid-19 pandemic world. Be enlightened with new ways to describe the fuzzy static that happens during a panic attack with the familiar prose of a John Green video (probably the books too but again, haven't read them. Yet)
Only losing 0.25 because I' m mad i didnt think of this memoir format first, I give The Anthropocene Reviewed 4.75 stars.

Particularly excellent as an audiobook!

"The Anthropocene Reviewed"

Method: audiobook by the author

One thing about me is: I love a theme. Themed events, themed locations, themed decor: give me something with a clearly-stated uniting category attached to it and I will be happy. And never more so than when it comes to collections of writings - be they essays, poems, short stories, letters, what have you - give me a clear overarching connection and I will be happy.

As themes go, "The Anthropocene" is broad enough to potentially be self-defeating. If it could be anything about human life (which in a piece of media made for humans essentially means 'anything at all', since everything we communicate about will always come back to us), what's the point in having a theme at all? Maybe that's me being too simplistic, but honestly the broadness of this theme does brush against the reason why I love them so much - I like being able to categorise things, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) to compartmentalise them, and a theme like this doesn't really allow for that sort of thing.

But my own personal taste in theming aside, I freaking loved this book. From the opening review of the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical 'Carousel' - a song I also have a personal connection to, with my very first time performing in a stage show having been as one of the Snow children who appears onstage during this song, in an experience which helped spark the love of theatre that has had such a profound influence on my life - I was hooked. My favourite reviews are the ones on the 1950 drama film "Harvey" (which serves as a deeply personal and empathy-facilitating explorarion of Green's experience with depression) and on the folk song "Auld Lang Syne" (which serves as a beautiful tribute to the work of his departed friend and mentor Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and has given me a variation on the song to sing which I will remember for the rest of my life).  This book has so many interesting, at times hilarious and at times profound reviews in here that are well worth reading - it's just that I love these two most, in equal measure. 

One of my favourite things about art is how it begets more art - both from a creative perspective (artists, writers, musicians, etc. being inspired by those who came before them and by their contemporaries), and from an audience perspective (one of my favourite examples of this is finding music for the first time through great needledrops in film and television). And to me, this book is at its best when it highlights some of the beautiful and strange and intriguing things that humans have created. I personally lean more towards the artistic ones, but the exploration of some of the more pragmatic human creations, such as vaccines, is also excellent -  informative and evocative, in equal measure. 

And this book does what so many of the books I deeply love do - it makes me want to write more, and it makes me want to participate more in the world. It makes me want both, in equal measure. 

I give "The Anthropocene Reviewed" four and a half stars.