For this week, I’d like to take a detour from the usual tech-centered posts and talk about storytelling in another form: books. Much of my free time away from working on my team’s project has been spent reading books. In fact, according to my Storygraph stats (a great website for tracking reading habits), I have read 14 books in the past two months. I would like to share and discuss one of my favorite books in particular I have been reading from one of my favorite authors and content creators. I write this in the hopes that someone reading this will pick up the book and let it change their perspective on the world like it has changed mine.
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
Quickly becoming one of my favorite works of non fiction, The Anthropocene Reviewed is a collection of essays reviewing various aspects of the Anthropocene, a term that describes the current geological age. At the end of each review, a rating is given out of 5 stars – and these reviews are about anything from scratch-and-sniff stickers to title pages to the internet. It is both a comical and thoughtful approach to many of the topics in todays world, and I have often found myself laughing from the silliness of it all and tearing up at how amazing the world really is.
One of the reasons I have gravitated towards this book is the way in which it has helped me appreciate various aspects of human existence I seldom think about – and, perhaps even more importantly, it has helped me appreciate the world. I have learned a lot of history about various things such as Claude glasses, how scratch-and-sniff stickers work, the invention of antibiotics, and the population growth of Canadian geese. I think it is very easy in this day and age to lose faith in the world and humanity as a whole, and I was in that boat – but this book has helped me realize just how amazing the Anthropocene is despite its flaws.
I would like to end this with one of my favorite quotes from the book’s introduction:
“To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and distance of the stars. … I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
