The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green

Read The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, a collection of bite-sized essays - half memoir, half miscellaneous nonfiction - framed as one- to five-star reviews of random stuff, concepts, places, and phenomena. The things that get five stars, in Green's reviews: sunsets, goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek's role in Liverpool FC's 2005 Champions League win, Harvey (1950), "Auld Lang Syne", the Bæjarins Betzu Psylur hot dog stand in Reykjavik, the Mountain Goats, sycamore trees, ginkgo trees, and "New Partner" by Palace Music. (For comparison, Halley's Comet and the cave paintings at Lascaux both get four and a half stars.) Many chapters are not straightforwardly about the thing he's supposedly reviewing: the chapter on "Auld Lang Syne", for example, is mostly about Green's friendship with the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal; his five-star experience of Bæjarins Betzu Psylur has more to do with being in Reykjavik on the day that Iceland won a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics and public euphoria ensued. "Googling strangers" (four stars) is centered on a story from his experience working as a student chaplain at a children's hospital in his twenties and made me actually cry. ( ... )

Anyway, I give this book four stars. It's not quite as impressive as an orbital sunrise, but solidly on the level of diet Dr Pepper, the QWERTY keyboard, and Indianapolis.