The Anthropocene Reviewed – Buddy Read Write-up Six (of nine)

To my followers, I swear that’s the last of the content alerts for at least a few days, and I’m a whiles off writing the next write-up. Thank you for sticking it out! I’m finally caught up and can diversify again – right in time for the busiest time in my study and working life.

I wrote these out of order. That’s probably the first thing that needs to be made clear. Largely because my life is chaos and no amount of planning and organising seems capable of running interference for this fact.

In this particular instance, I wrote these out of order because I wanted to write this one while it was still reasonably fresh in my mind. Four and Five have now also been written, but with future knowledge embedded, so they’re likely a little off.

Let’s get to it though.

The batches have been getting increasingly less fun to delve into. I’m not sure what order John Green wrote them in, but the order in which they’ve been anthologised isn’t doing much for me nor, by all accounts, my book buddy Marie, from Marie Reads Books. The conversation we have about the batches is still largely entertaining, for us, but they’re less nice, less forgiving, and ultimately, less on par with what others seem to have thought about this collection of essays.

In this batch of five, we had:

• Googling Strangers
• Indianapolis
• Kentucky Bluegrass
• The Indianapolis 500
• Monopoly

and, I have no notes. None. Another reason why I had to jump on writing this one sooner rather than later. I am relying solely on my memory of our discussion to bring you some kind of a review.

Googling Strangers

We liked this one. Both of us. I know this may seem shocking after everything I’ve said until this point, but Googling Strangers was fantastic, and poignant, and beautiful. Googling Stranger stuck that sweet balance between theme, nostalgia, memory and insight. Googling Strangers was a beacon of eloquence, in among what has become quite a bit of waffle. (I do know how ironic a lot of my criticisms are considering how often they can be applied to my own work, but thanks for checking.)

Marie and I were both pleasantly surprised to find that John Green found it within himself to show us his writing ability again, after so long of seeming intrinsically uncomfortable with doing what he set out to do, which is talk about himself.

Googling Strangers had a beginning, middle and end, it hit its notes of impact and philosophy perfectly, and it left me with a fair amount of the feels. I give Googling Strangers a respectful 4.5 out of 5.

The others

I wish that which was true for Googling Strangers was true for all of these essays, but it is not.

Of the rest, I could barely recall any of them. Monopoly stands out the sharpest, because it made me angry – the content rather than the writing, which is good. I liked Monopoly, and am glad John Green included it. I learnt something from Monopoly that I hadn’t known before and, as a feminist, though unsurprised, I’m glad I know it now.

The same cannot be said about the others. They were kind of … fillery. There’s an essay about grass (I think I’ve mentioned this before). Literally. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do think knowing how pointless and ridiculous grass is is important, but the impact of the piece was lost in the absence of structure. Green seems to be spending a lot of time loosely discussing topics and tenuously linking those topics to his personal experience. There’s a distinct lack of substance with so many of these essays that it’s becoming harder and harder to approach them with anything other than criticism, which honestly isn’t what I’m about (I really know that it sounds that that is exactly what I’m about. It’s complicated.)

I will say this; as far as general theme is concerned, I’m more and more confident that I know the broader intent behind the essays. Initially, Marie and I spent a lot of time trying to thematically group them, but that soon became a little ambitious. What does seem consistently present, however, is the theme of anxieties around things the human race did/does/is doing that is hurting our planet and our own species. This ranges from the superficial to the catastrophic and is, in itself, is an extraordinarily important topic to discuss, explore and digest. Every once in a dozen essays does a really good job of it. I kinda wish they’d all been doing it, though, so the impact might have been greater.

Perhaps it’s a good thing Marie and I seem to be in the minority in terms of how we’re experiencing the collection.

As always, Marie and I can be found and followed at:
@serialhobbiest
@serial_readings
@mariereads_books
Marie’s YouTube Channel