“When people write reviews, they are really writing a kind of memoir – here’s what my experience was eating at this restaurant or getting my hair cut at this barbershop.”

Is this book a memoir? The title – The Anthropocene Reviewed and the subtitle Essays on a Human-Centered Planet — offer no clues. However, in the introduction, the author says that he wants to tell us stories about his life so that we can see how he has formed his opinions. The titles of his essays – Diet Dr. Pepper, Velociraptors, Sunsets – tell us his topics, but not his subject. His subject is how he experiences and then interprets these things. So, yes, this is a type of memoir because we get to know the author. I find his creative candor entirely appealing.

Green, John. The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet. Dutton, 2021, pp. 5-6.