I didn’t expect or even want to like this book, but I ended up really loving it. John Green’s musings on the human experience were interesting and insightful and frustrating and relatable in all the right ways. The balance between the more personal aspects of this book and the more academic aspects was just right.

This book is a lovely and reflective look at what humans have done to the world and what the world has done to us without ever claiming to be a complete or objective account of anything.

Please note that this book was mostly written during the COVID-19 pandemic and talks about pandemics and plague and mental illness and death quite a lot. These topics are handled as sensitively as possible, but the book still might be hard to read because of that content.

Some favorite quotes (I listened to the audiobook so I don’t have page numbers and some of these might be slightly off):

I found that last line especially interesting in light of John Green’s novels, particularly The Fault in Our Stars.

I have decided not to rate this book for now, but I might change my mind about that at a later date.