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A review by hollydyer328
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.0
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
Moderate: Death