“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.”
― John Green
I’m listening to this book for the second time after just barely finishing it. I am enamored with it. Its wit. Its warmth. Its intelligence. Its humility. Its hope for the world and humanity. I suppose “it” is really John Green and his engaging observations. Each short chapter contains his personal experiences and meditations—and 1-5 star ratings of everything from Dr. Pepper to the classic and remarkably old song, Old Lang Syne.
Along the way you learn some useful and often obscure history. And you see some things you thought you knew in surprisingly new ways. You learn directly and indirectly that most all of us live by faith. Religious or not.
I give John Green and The Anthropocene Reviewed 5 stars. And my wife, Jane, 5 stars for recommending it to me.
Here’s an NPR review of it: Author John Green Explores How To Live In Uncertainty In ‘The Anthropocene Reviewed’
Speaking of faith. I also recommend an extremely good essay about faith, fear, and Martin Luther King that I read in the magazine, Deseret. It shares some details that I did not know about just how frighteningly difficult it was for Dr. King to lead the game-changing march in Birmingham Alabama. And what that taught the author of the essay and what it can teach us.
Read it here: The faith that stares through death—Sixty years ago this month, Martin Luther King Jr. marched in Birmingham. It changed America. And deepened King’s faith in God
