No Observers, Only Participants

A Review of "The Anthropocene Reviewed" by John Green

I listened to the audiobook version, available on Spotify.

STAR RATING: ✰✰✰✰✰
Spoiler-free review.

Written at the height of the Covid outbreak, John Green’s reflections on loneliness, humanity, and the self transcend time.

The Anthropocene Reviewed is a chapter-by-chapter ‘review’ of both simple and complex topics and their relation to the human condition, like ginkgo trees, Lascaux cave paintings, and air-conditioning. John Green combines philosophy with his own past and observations to examine each topic thoroughly before finalizing them with a starred score. I want to say this book is for people who enjoy history or philosophy, but truly, this book is for any human. If you breathe, think, and feel, you will find joy and even purpose in reading this book.

I read this at the perfect time. I’m recently graduated and unemployed, and I’ve spent the last six months in my room doom-scrolling Indeed and my rejection emails. This book genuinely had an impact on my daily mood. I keep thinking back to the introduction chapter and these lines:

“To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars.”

I’m a deeply sentimental person. I get overwhelmed with wonder and the metaphoric simply by looking out the window, and this book captures that feeling on paper. There is both beauty and tragedy in the smallest things around us, and to truly experience life, we have to stop and look for those things. Thanks, John Green.