John Green (1) (1977–)

In this essay collection, YA novelist John Green explores human life in all its richness, mundaneness, absurdity, and joy.

These essays originally began as a podcast, but you don't have to have listened to the podcast to enjoy the Green's personal explorations of what he likes - and doesn't - about our modern American life. Their format of five-star reviews of daily human experience in all its ups and downs came at least in part from a trip author John Green took with his brother, Hank, in show more which they tried to find the most absurd Google reviews possible. Though many have been written over the last four years or so, a few were very clearly from 2020 and briefly mention or specifically address the pandemic. I found myself relating to his comments about missing sports and hating to mow, intrigued by the history of the Piggly Wiggly, and enjoying the profound thoughts mixed with humor and wry observation. I started out reading just an essay or two a day, but found myself not able to stop after just a few and finished the collection quickly. Whether you've read any of John Green's fiction or not, I highly recommend this collection. show less

The fault does not lie in our stars, but in me: I read the thing, and more or less lived to tell about it.

The story itself is compelling of course: how could it not be ... unless you are some kind of soul-less sociopath who could not connect to any human story of love?

It is the writing that is execrable -- and then perhaps not so much the writing in itself, as the construct of absurd dialogues that move between the idiotic and the half-witted. Teenagers/Young Adults simply do not show more speak/think/behave in this way; and for those who do, I lump them into the "idiotic and half-witted" camp, and I rest my case.

It beggars belief that this story has garnered so many 5-star ratings because it is a rambling mish-mash of regurgitated and far-too-often replicated stories of young love, written in a less-than-stellar style. Accolades such as "lyrical" and "poetic" accompany this book wherever it goes. .... Huh???

Let me offer some "lyricism and poetry" instead:

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Now that I suspect was the storyline that Green was trying to pursue, but just couldn't quite get his mind around -- and so he gave up, and blamed the universe anyway. It took him a few hundred pages to not achieve what Shakespeare captured, absolutely, in 16 words. Shakespeare -- who was writing in the 16th century -- outstripped this story in a handful of words, 5 centuries ago.

I bemoan the fact that nobody reads good literature anymore. If this is an example of what the world is rating as "stellar", then I give up on "literature" altogether, for surely, It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

One star is generous. At some point, goodreads will have to initiate a negative rating.

PS I suspect that even in its initial stages of construction, this novel was intended for the Big Screen, to capitalize/exploit its theme, for it reads very much like a slapped-together script. On that level, I'm sure it has achieved a 3-hankie rating, for this translates much better on the screen, in the hands of an expert director, than it appears on the page. show less

For those of us lucky enough to live in rich countries with decent healthcare it's easy to think of tuberculosis as something quaint and old-fashioned, bringing to mind languishing 19th century poets or Doc Holliday quietly coughing blood into a handkerchief. But not only has tuberculosis killed a truly staggering number of people throughout human history, it continues to kill frankly unfathomable numbers today... even though, with modern medicine, it is entirely curable. Not easily curable. show more But curable.

I was fascinated and horrified to learn these particular statistics, but, I admit, I spent much of the early parts of this book feeling as if, interesting as it might be, it was skimming a little too lightly over its subject and not going into nearly as much depth as I'd been hoping for. Eventually, though, I realized that's because it wasn't quite the book I had expected it to be. It's not a medical history of TB at all. It is, to some extent, a cultural history of the disease. But it's not even primarily that. What it's really about is the story of TB as the story of inequality, of the vicious cycles with which poverty and disease reinforce each other, and of a world that could put its efforts and resources towards addressing these problems and has chosen not to. All of which is extremely depressing, although John Green does find space for hope and optimism, as well as centering his narrative around the story of one particular TB patient from Sierra Leone whose story, despite years of struggle, stigma, and hardship, did have a happy ending.

I will say that I eventually did reach a point where I felt like Green was mostly just making the same points over and over again in slightly different ways, which sort of makes me feel like this might be one of those non-fiction books that might have been slightly more suited to life as a long article instead. But then, I imagine far fewer people would have read it in that case, and its message is one that deserves to reach as wide an audience as it can get. show less

Green, John. The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet. New York: Dutton, 2021. 274 pp.

On the surface, John Green’s Anthropocene Reviewed goes through 40 to 50 items or concepts from the human world, gives them a decent Yelp-style review, and rates them on a five-star scale. Almost everything is up for grabs, from the movie Harvey to Diet Dr. Pepper to the Lascaux cave paintings and so on. Seems simple, but the part that grabs you is that interlaced in every review a bit show more of biography and reflection. It seems self-evident that in order to review something, you have to interact with it, and it becomes a part of your life, so all reviews are in some ways autobiographical.

Green’s reviews go deeper, however. We get his pain from his days as a chaplain, his joy in finding family in fellow football fans, his serenity when talking to his children, his fear when admitting that he Googles people before going to their house.

This book is great but suffers from the bite-size/binging problem. Each little review is great for quick dips when you have a few minutes, but I found myself flying through them, about ten at a time. I give John Green’s Anthropocene Reviewed five stars. show less