10 Books Like The Anthropocene Reviewed

World of Wonders is, I think, the most comparable to The Anthropocene Reviewed. It’s a stunning collection of lyrical vignettes about nature by the poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil, complete with gorgeous illustrations by Fumi Nakamura. Learn to love the beauty in the strangeness of axolotl, corpse flowers, and dragon fruit alongside moving personal stories.

Matt Haig is a treasure, and Reasons to Stay Alive is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. It’s composed of bite-sized chapters, lists, and anecdotes about the big and small joys that come with being alive. It’s a book to keep in your pocket just in case you need a reminder to stay.

This is maybe cheating, since it was an early pick for Green’s Life’s Library book club, but it gives me the same yearning for adventure that I got with The Anthropocene Reviewed. Sue me. Rebecca Solnit contemplates walking, wandering, and getting lost in the absolutely gorgeous A Field Guide to Getting Lost. She muses on the ephemeral experiences that take place in static, permanent places, and how sometimes getting lost is the way to being found. Much of my copy of the book is underlined.

Ross Gay recorded every small joy he experienced from one birthday to the next. Like life, The Book of Delights covers a swath of human experience, from his fear of living in America as a Black man to the joy of pickup basketball games. We can all take a page out of Gay’s book and look for those tiny delights amid all the bad in the world.

Let me preface this by saying I am not a runner and I cannot comprehend how people can love such an activity. But What I Talk About When I Talk About Running got me to see the beauty running can contain for the people who love it. Haruki Murakami writes intimately about writing and running, and how he’s deeply obsessed with both, as they are equal parts of his daily routines. Murakami’s musings make this one of the more delightful books like The Anthropocene Reviewed.

Austin Kleon is known for his genius writings on creativity and art. Keep Going is full of perfect mantras to learn (or try) to separate your brain from the tiny computer in your pocket. Start a daily routine, go for a walk, pay attention. His rules sound simple, but are so hard to follow.

In this lovely collection of illustrated essays, Jonny Sun gets vulnerable about mental health, productivity, loneliness, and happiness. Goodbye, Again feels like having a close friend whispering in your ear that everything will be okay, much like The Anthropocene Reviewed does.

Physics, but make it Black and feminist: that’s what Chanda Prescod-Weinstein created in The Disordered Cosmos. Because society and science cannot exist without each other, it’s only fitting that the two be studied together, which means confronting the systemic racism in both places in order to see a more just world. But just because you acknowledge the ugly doesn’t mean you can’t still see the beauty.

Suzanne Simard is an ecologist with a focus on plant communication and intelligence. Finding the Mother Tree is her stunning manifesto about the communal nature inherent in forests. She posits that forests are social, with trees communicating with each other just like human society. But in order to fully grasp that, humans — scientists in particular — must understand their place in the world. Simard writes beautifully about her life and what she’s learned. You’ll find yourself daydreaming of forests as you read.

Caitlin Doughty, charming mortician of the internet, traveled the globe to witness all manner of death and burial rituals. She attends an open-pyre funeral in the U.S. and visits a body farm where researchers are perfecting human composting. From Here to Eternity is a beautiful tribute to human life and death and the ways we tend to our dead. This may not be the most obvious of books like The Anthropocene Reviewed, but I think it’s a perfect fit: Humans at their most vulnerable, following tradition.