Three star review, originally posted here on November 20th, 2024.
Long story short, this book is just a bunch of random thoughts. They were mostly fine.
I’m pretty sure that I am not the target audience for this book. The target audience is people who are already familiar with John Green and his work, from reading his super famous novels, and/or listening to his podcast. I assume 99% of people reading this book fall into that category, and I assume most of those people (especially the podcast fans) really like this book. If that’s you, then great!
But I’m in the remaining 1% who kinda stumbled into this book. I had never heard of John Green or his podcast before. I had heard of 2 of his books, and was surprised to realize that “Turtles All the Way Down” and “The Fault in our Stars” were by the same guy. How did I wind up here? I asked random students (I teach webinars) to each name a book they recommend (I’m looking for ideas), and this was one of them. The student followed up saying that the guy does a podcast, and he reads the audiobook. Great! Episodic tales based on an podcast sounded like exactly what I wanted to listen to.
The gimmick here is that, supposedly, each chapter is a review of something. But, of course, it’s not a review. It’s just 15-20 minutes babbling about whatever Green felt like babbling about, and at the end he says “I give the [INSERT TITLE OF CHAPTER] four and a half stars.” I really liked the idea here, but he didn’t really execute on the idea. Instead, he’d tell meandering tales that would go all over the place, then tack on the star review as an afterthought. I think a book of actual reviews would have worked much better.
This sounds like a pan, but it’s not. This is a neutral review. This book was fine. There were moments that really drew me in, thoughts that inspired me to think, recollections that made me laugh. Green seems like a cool guy, and I think I’d like to hang out with him. I even think I would like to read his novels, and might even really like them. But overall, this style of this particular book was just too unfocused to draw me in or get me excited.
I give The Anthropocene Reviewed… three stars.
Helga without the H 