i really, really enjoyed this.

first off, i understand the criticism behind green’s structure for this book with ratings. it’s certainly curious and without context it can feel dismissive (because nothing truly can be boiled down to 5 stars, even books!) at least for me, i find rating systems somewhat arbitrary..for instance, when i go to rate even this book, what is the difference between a 4.5 and a 5? what needs to be accomplished to achieve that extra half point? i don’t know.

that said, it is soooo interesting how much the 5 star rating system has become a metric of feedback, opinion and influence in almost every area of life (dare i say the anthropocene? ha!) and even though i think a 5 star rating system (or similar) is inherently objective and dismissive in certain ways, i still look up what a restaurant or destination is rated online, i take into account reviews when i choose a book to read, scour comments on social media posts to gauge other’s responses to inform my own. i believe this is the phenomenon that green is toying with here, as he explains in the prologue. how funny is it that while the five star rating is relatively new to our use, we rely on it and contribute to it so frequently as a human race? that this rating system is inherently flawed yet we still attribute value to it? that our ratings often act like mini-memoirs of our experience, of the time we spent in a place or within a phenomenon? that you can find starred reviews for almost anything from park benches to blockbuster movies? i find it wholly interesting that we as humans do this, it’s silly yet endearing, flawed yet practical and speaks to our behavior as a species.

i felt like this book accomplished a lot for me. i learned things i never knew. i learned about things i thought i knew about (like air conditioning) but then learned something entirely new to me. i thought deeply about my humanity and my relationship to other beings both human and non human, even down to microbes. i felt both infinitesimal and singular.

perhaps this book is what i needed in this moment. green’s willingness to be honest with his audience to share moments of his life that were formative to him, through pain and pleasure, was refreshing in a way i couldn’t have expected.

listening to this with green narrating only heightened these feelings. so with that, i give The Anthropocene Reviewed 4.5 stars.