The Y.A author John Green’s new and first nonfiction book  The Anthropocene Reviewed was published on May 8, 2021. The book is a collection of personal essays that talk about how “ being human in 2021 is weird”  due to the pandemic.  

The author of the book, John Green, is an American author and Youtuber who has had multiple books debut at number one on the New York Times Best Sellers list. He focuses on young adult fiction and romance, but with his new book “The Anthropocene Reviewed”, he takes on a new challenge by writing his first nonfiction book.

John Green’s novel could not have come out at a better time! With young teenagers dealing with the stress resulting from COVID, Green carries themes of hope, despair, and survival. He words the experiences as one would like to be able to express, and his stories are true to himself. Green varies his emotions with uplifting and humoring, but can also talk seriously and truthfully when it comes to important matters. He uses different metaphors and comparisons to help us relate to him like the Penguins of Madagascar. He supports the idea that with every struggle that surpasses in our lives we must use our emotions and hope to prevail in life. He expresses that love will always push us through our challenges no matter how powerless we seem in the situation, that our emotions are powerful.

Green associates the idea that we as humans are the number one race on Earth. But with being the most elite race comes great responsibility to take care of our world, which as he states, our past generations have not carried out very well. With climate change and COVID, our generation is responsible to pick up the pieces and find alternative solutions for our mistakes. He motivates us to keep being hopeful for the future and to fight for not only our future but for the future of our future generations. He emphasizes that we hold all of the power in our hands to create change, whether it is positive or negative to our own species. We have to take care of our world because it will eventually move on without us; every action we take will take its toll on the lives of those after us.

Grabbing the book for the very first time, I did not know much about it, but of course, my expectations were high since it is John Green, and of course he did not disappoint.  All of the chapters summed up to create such a beautiful yet unique idea: human existence is messy, destructive, yet hopeful, and beautiful.  He touches deep and honest ideas towards society and he manages to summarize it all so perfectly fitting. His book is like a puzzle, and as you read through it, every chapter is an additional piece helping you reach the overall idea. I really like the way he formalized it because he keeps you intrigued to keep reading, he dangles a piece of chocolate in your face and forces you to keep going in order to reach for the final piece. My favorite part was the ease in relating ourselves as teenagers to the book.

Green does an outstanding job in creating a safe and comfortable feeling throughout the book which made me intrigued to keep reading. Within reading the book, I always remained in the moment of the book and captivated as much as I could to create an image in my head. It hit so many personal aspects of my life which I myself could not explain in words. Yet, Green expressed them so smoothly and gracefully which made it easy to read. I really did enjoy his book, and I am looking forward to reading more from him. In my opinion, this was a five-star book, and I would definitely recommend you guys to give it a read.