Scan barcode
A review by nhnabass
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
5.0
I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did. As others mentioned, it feels silly leaving a review after Green takes great care to note the arbitration of 5 stars but nonetheless I am here to share my experience. Reading it felt like a much needed reality check, a humbling "come back down to earth" moment, and really felt like I was given permission to sit down with the little things in life despite the increasingly rapid, aggressive, hustle culture we are living in. As Green mentions in the Postscript, "I have tried here to map some of the places where my little life brushes up against the big forces shaping contemporary human experience, but the only conclusion I can draw is a simple one: We are so small, and so frail, so gloriously and terrifyingly temporary."
What a wonderful homage to humanity's short lived existence. Is this all encompassing of humanity's greatest achievements and worst downfalls? Of course not, it is existence through the eyes of a progressive middle aged-ish white man from Florida. But what that means is we are being shown the small snippets of an every day human's life and it's interactions with humanity as a whole. The connections and meanings we make and assume, this book is very human and again, gives us permission to look at our lives and do the same. "I don't believe we have a choice when it comes to whether we endow the world with meaning. We are all little fairies, sprinkling meaning dust everywhere we go.... We will build meaning whenever we go, with whatever we come across."
Finally, Green ends his section on Sunsets with "It is a sunset, and it is beautiful, and this whole thing you've been doing where nothing gets five stars because nothing is perfect? That's bullshit. So much is perfect. Starting with this. I give sunsets five stars"
Thank god for this quote-- as someone who feels surrounded by a constant stream of 3.5s and 4.75s because "nothing is perfect" I feel more and more anxious giving something 5 stars: I tell myself "was that really 5? Is everything really that good? Are my standards just low?" Fuck that. This book was 5 stars.
What a wonderful homage to humanity's short lived existence. Is this all encompassing of humanity's greatest achievements and worst downfalls? Of course not, it is existence through the eyes of a progressive middle aged-ish white man from Florida. But what that means is we are being shown the small snippets of an every day human's life and it's interactions with humanity as a whole. The connections and meanings we make and assume, this book is very human and again, gives us permission to look at our lives and do the same. "I don't believe we have a choice when it comes to whether we endow the world with meaning. We are all little fairies, sprinkling meaning dust everywhere we go.... We will build meaning whenever we go, with whatever we come across."
Finally, Green ends his section on Sunsets with "It is a sunset, and it is beautiful, and this whole thing you've been doing where nothing gets five stars because nothing is perfect? That's bullshit. So much is perfect. Starting with this. I give sunsets five stars"
Thank god for this quote-- as someone who feels surrounded by a constant stream of 3.5s and 4.75s because "nothing is perfect" I feel more and more anxious giving something 5 stars: I tell myself "was that really 5? Is everything really that good? Are my standards just low?" Fuck that. This book was 5 stars.