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Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
5 reviews
gris_zorra's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Minor: Suicide
lia_mills's review against another edition
4.5
Method: audiobook by the author
One thing about me is: I love a theme. Themed events, themed locations, themed decor: give me something with a clearly-stated uniting category attached to it and I will be happy. And never more so than when it comes to collections of writings - be they essays, poems, short stories, letters, what have you - give me a clear overarching connection and I will be happy.
As themes go, "The Anthropocene" is broad enough to potentially be self-defeating. If it could be anything about human life (which in a piece of media made for humans essentially means 'anything at all', since everything we communicate about will always come back to us), what's the point in having a theme at all? Maybe that's me being too simplistic, but honestly the broadness of this theme does brush against the reason why I love them so much - I like being able to categorise things, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) to compartmentalise them, and a theme like this doesn't really allow for that sort of thing.
But my own personal taste in theming aside, I freaking loved this book. From the opening review of the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" from the musical 'Carousel' - a song I also have a personal connection to, with my very first time performing in a stage show having been as one of the Snow children who appears onstage during this song, in an experience which helped spark the love of theatre that has had such a profound influence on my life - I was hooked. My favourite reviews are the ones on the 1950 drama film "Harvey" (which serves as a deeply personal and empathy-facilitating explorarion of Green's experience with depression) and on the folk song "Auld Lang Syne" (which serves as a beautiful tribute to the work of his departed friend and mentor Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and has given me a variation on the song to sing which I will remember for the rest of my life). This book has so many interesting, at times hilarious and at times profound reviews in here that are well worth reading - it's just that I love these two most, in equal measure.
One of my favourite things about art is how it begets more art - both from a creative perspective (artists, writers, musicians, etc. being inspired by those who came before them and by their contemporaries), and from an audience perspective (one of my favourite examples of this is finding music for the first time through great needledrops in film and television). And to me, this book is at its best when it highlights some of the beautiful and strange and intriguing things that humans have created. I personally lean more towards the artistic ones, but the exploration of some of the more pragmatic human creations, such as vaccines, is also excellent - informative and evocative, in equal measure.
And this book does what so many of the books I deeply love do - it makes me want to write more, and it makes me want to participate more in the world. It makes me want both, in equal measure.
I give "The Anthropocene Reviewed" four and a half stars.
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Cancer, Chronic illness, Death, Mental illness, Grief, and Pandemic/Epidemic
takarakei's review against another edition
5.0
I give John Green's book 5 stars.
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Mental illness, Grief, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Child death, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, and Medical content
Minor: Bullying, Cancer, Slavery, Antisemitism, Alcohol, and War
Animal death -scruffie's review against another edition
5.0
Probably like others before me, I give the Anthropocene Reviewed five stars.
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Genocide, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Suicidal thoughts, Xenophobia, Medical content, Grief, and Alcohol
Moderate: Terminal illness and Antisemitism
Minor: Drug use, Slavery, Vomit, Islamophobia, Colonisation, and War
phobosm's review against another edition
4.0
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Genocide, Panic attacks/disorders, and Terminal illness
Minor: Alcoholism, Cancer, Child abuse, and Drug use