The first time I became aware of John Green, I was choking back loud, messy sobs in my room at two in the morning. I was eighteen, it was 2012, and I’d just stayed up engrossed in his breakout hit The Fault in Our Stars. I don’t remember how a copy ended up in my hands– based on my avid book consumption throughout high school, it could’ve been a gift from a family member or an impulse buy from my local bookstore– but I do remember my reaction as I looked at the book cover and struggled to regain my composure: Who the hell is this guy?
It’s important to note that, at this point in my life, only two other books had moved me to tears. Neither had elicited the snotty dishevelment I was reduced to. That John Green, an author I’d never read before, had destroyed me emotionally in a mere 313 pages intrigued and inspired me. In the morning, I did what any self-respecting teenager in the early 2010s did when presented with an unknown quantity: looked him up online.
John Green’s fame may have started with his writing, but his online presence and accessibility made him even more interesting in the eyes of the young people reading his books. His constant YouTube offerings with his brother Hank, ongoing charity drives, Twitter presence, and Tumblr blog displayed incredible amounts of openness and interactivity, a type of authorial accessibility that felt new and exciting to those of us following his sudden ascent to stardom. I, along with thousands of others, followed his online journey for years after discovering him.
But, as with all things, seasons change, and interests wane. Green pulled back from the internet a bit after getting a little too big1, and I was entering the adult world for the first time. When I did check in on him, it was after my husband bought Turtles All the Way Down. I found his writing no longer moved me the way it had when I was a teenager, and I let Green fall off my radar.
And then the pandemic hit, and John Green switched from writing Young Adult novels to nonfiction.
The Earth has been around for a long time. So long it’s hard to fathom. To make the time scale of Earth’s formation and the evolution of life more manageable, geologists split these millions of years into smaller chunks, each defined by the main components found in the rock record. It’s where we get names for the different dinosaurs (think of the “Jurassic” in Jurassic Park) or how we know when major extinction events devastated our planet. As of now, our current epoch has no set name, but many geologists are working to establish one: the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene, should the geologic time scale be updated, is set to be defined as the epoch where human interaction is the dominant force in everything from the changing climate to the altered environment. It will also be marked by another major extinction event, this one caused entirely by humans’ reshaping of the planet into a hostile place for thousands of species. But our terraformed world hasn’t just hurt the native plants and animals around us. As evidenced by the last three years, we can often turn this force against ourselves.
In early 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread across our global trading routes and commercial airlines, and those of us not in essential positions found ourselves stuck at home, watching the world we thought we knew break down around us. John Green, who’d been writing a podcast for two years about the modern absurdities and contradictions of the Anthropocene, saw his work in a stark new light. The Anthropocene Reviewed was born.
A collection of essays centered around the unique ways Green’s life has butted up against the forces of a human-centered world, The Anthropocene Reviewed is a thought-provoking memoir dressed up as a tongue-in-cheek “review” of all the current geological age has to offer. Ranging from topics like the Canada Goose to Staphylococcus aureus, Green blends history, biology, art, and philosophy with personal experience, rating each facet on a five-star scale. The connecting thread throughout the pages is the pandemic, looming in the background, throwing new perspective on what may have once been considered mundane. But, to Green, nothing about the Anthropocene is mundane: “What an astonishment to breathe on this breathing planet. What a blessing to be Earth loving Earth.”
Unlike The Fault in Our Stars, I do remember how The Anthropocene Reviewed ended up on my shelf. It was 2021, and we were visiting one of the few recreational public spaces we allowed ourselves during the pandemic– the local bookstore. My husband, who still watched the Green brothers’ videos occasionally, spied a signed copy of The Anthropocene Reviewed and excitedly added it to our growing stack. As we wandered the shelves, I flipped through the first few pages to get a taste of what the book had to offer. The word “pandemic” leaped off the page. My breath hot under my N95 mask, I snapped the book closed. It was still too close. Too fresh. I declined to touch it until it was recommended more than a year later for the Book of the Month Club.
Though the pandemic affected everyone differently (and continues to do so in its current, endemic form), The Anthropocene Reviewed captures a feeling many experienced in that first, strange, terrifying year. The world around us shifted and changed, our lives now split into a “before” and “after”. Shortages made us realize that our way of life is fragile and constructed; sickness reminded us of our mortality; the quiet return of wildlife in that first month put a spotlight on human destruction. Green’s reviews in Anthropocene hold that same contradictory wonder and reckoning, without falling victim to purple prose or cliche. Each essay bleeds earnesty and vulnerability, refusing to couch itself in irony to make us or the author comfortable. Reading the book in the winter of 2023, I was glad I’d avoided it when I first brought it home. Distance has made the wounded, if hopeful, feeling of the book more bearable without losing any of its poignancy and cutting wit.
The intense energy of Green’s Anthropocene is no surprise when compared to his previous books, and the transition from fiction to autobiographical essays feels like a natural evolution of his work. As one of the first “certified” YouTube stars, Green is known for his short, concise videos on a variety of topics, the videos evolving alongside the changing social media landscape. While he has a knack for appearing as if he makes the videos spontaneously, many are carefully crafted to fit a wealth of research into a brief timespan, ensuring he remains engaging without losing the viewer’s attention.
This same production value extends to his essays. Each is quick, no more than ten pages, and packs a lot of information and insight in every sentence. It’s a unique skill, coaxing philosophy and feeling out of bite-sized essays, and it makes the book an engaging read. That said, read too many at one time, and the scaffolding that holds each together becomes apparent. Just like I wouldn’t binge-watch Green on YouTube, I don’t recommend reading more than a few essays at once. Spacing them out gives the essays room to breathe, something I desperately needed before taking on a book so heavily centered around our ongoing worldwide tragedy.
When Green showed his first few essays to his wife, she told him, “When people write reviews, they are really writing a kind of memoir.” In the two years of writing book reflections on TeaReads, I’ve yet to ever manage a truly “objective” review. It’s oxymoronic. No such thing. Every reflection on this blog is a piece of me, just like every review in The Anthropocene Reviewed is a part of John Green. It’s part of the reason that I’ve always hated the word “review” and used “reflection” instead, even at the cost of my SEO rankings. But, I think just this once, I’ll allow the word and its oft-associated five-star ranking system into my repertoire. My review of a John Green book has been a long time coming on this blog, and for those interested in his work for more adult audiences, I can’t think of a better place to start.
I give John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed four out of five stars.
1. In particular, I remember being present on Tumblr in 2014 when John Green finally nuked his account. While many thought he left after the infamous cock and balls spoof post (link NSFW), the tipping point was actually a series of very specific death threats with his address and pictures of his home attached. He’s back on Tumblr now but in a much more limited capacity.
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