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I’ve been consuming John Green’s content since 2012, when I first read The Fault in Our Stars. I remember this as the first book I ever read on an ereader: a nook (iykyk). Since then, I’ve come across his work in my capacity as a reader and as a teacher of young adults (Crash Course English Literature ftw!) I knew that Green was a remarkable storyteller in both fiction and nonfiction, but that didn’t prepare me for how obsessed I would become with his podcast and subsequent book titled The Anthropocene Reviewed. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Paul Cohelo wrote, “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.” The Anthropocene Reviewed is a series of essays that rate different — often outwardly ordinary — aspects of the human centered planet on a five star scale, usually proving those things to be extraordinary in the process. Part fact finding and part memoir, each essay had me riveted. I was brought to tears by Lauscaux paintings and penalty shootouts, delighted in discovering I was right about the differences between Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper, and marveled at the ways in which our species has powerfully — but as Green reminds us, not irrevocably — shaped this planet. I firmly believe that everything is interesting if you study it closely enough, and Green brings this theory to life in the way only he can. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ We’re coming up on the holiday season, and I think this book would make a great gift for just about anyone! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I recognize the inception-ness and irony of rating an essay collection satirizing the rating of things, and as a book reviewer I have my own feelings about the five star scale, but I’ve gotta do it. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five stars. via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/CWTFJITrMmC/