John's candid, introspective writing is the true star of the show in this collection of essays, which I have struggled to describe to my friends and family since picking up. "It's a collection of little essays about random things, like Diet Dr. Pepper, but it's also about deeply personal things like emotions and social issues and philosophy, and it's formatted as a review of said mundane things using a star scale" does not adequately express the experience of reading this book for me.
John has a particular knack for writing about the contradictory experience of hope and hopelessness, pain and pleasure, ugliness and beauty that is the lived human experience, and the personal nature of this book brings those ideas into even sharper focus. It made me feel like the most obscure and hard to express emotions that I have been feeling in these times of trouble were seen and understood. 
In addition to the deeper sentiments expressed by the book, I also found it educational on a variety of topics and learned lots of fun facts about science, history, and of course, Diet Dr. Pepper. 

I really didn't think that I'd be giving John Green a 5 star review in 2025. But. I found this collection of essays - with the exception of the sports-related ones - incredibly relatable. 

Green is anxious and quite nihilistic, which isn't always the easiest point of view to read from, but it is one that is very familiar to me. It brings me a lot of peace and hope to read about the often mundane things that make Green feel grounded and hopeful. I feel like some of the pieces in this collection really helped me to believe that maybe I can become a more hopeful person, or at least a nihilistic person who can be grounded and reminded that humanity isn't always awful.

My favourite, as I did expect it to be (as a person who is Scottish), was the Auld Lang Syne essay. I first heard it on the vlogbrothers channel when Green read this essay, and it has been one of the few youtube videos that I have rewatched numerous times over the years.

I just love the way John Green writes and his foray into nonfiction was even better than I anticipated. This was the perfect read for the state of the world right now: hopeful but not ignoring the tragedy of everything, too. It was also such a fun concept, to rate just...things. I'd read five more of these books.