An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

I’m really thinking about how I feel about this book. I have been following Hank Green since literally 2007. I’m pretty OG and pretty consistent. Like I’ve maybe gone a month without consuming some sort of Hank Green media. Maybe. In 11 years. Any time I’m hot I sing It’s too Hot. But I might be meh about the book. Or maybe I liked it but it didn’t knock me out so I’m sad about that. Like it might be a four star. But I can’t tell. But I know that I am having a way more emotional reaction to not wanting to give this book five stars than I did to the book. I might actually cry because I didn’t completely love this book. And the book didn’t even get me close to tears. Except in the acknowledgments. Which I don’t think counts. 

I am going to go to sleep and when I wake up I will decide how I felt about the book. 

I just sort of think I couldn’t really connect to April through Hank. Like I was getting too much Hank to find a connection to April. But I don’t know if that is fair. And I have read many SSF books recently that I can see America’s current political situation in, but this one felt like the world was too similar to ours for the differences to make sense. And like the way the extremist and fear mongering just sort of was mostly solved at the end. That part of the plot felt too convenient. 

I also felt like I wasn’t seeing a side of Hank Green that I can’t find on the internet. I’m not sure this book added to his body of work any diversity, it’s just a new medium to say the same thing. Which is fine. I just feel like I might have just liked a book of personal essays better than this. I kind of felt like a lot of the plot was a way to fit basically personal essays into it. 

I guess I decided against sleeping on it. 

There were things I did like. 

I liked the character Maya.

I liked how funny the book was. It did edge into being absurdist once but for the most part, I found the book funny. At times the funny kind of made it hard to feel sorrow or empathy for the characters. This added to the odd pacing. 

The plot was very interesting and I think well developed. I genuinely was interested in the Carl’s and what was up with them. I will read the next book because that ending was pretty good. 

I kind of rocketed between going “yes I do like this part” to “oh maybe I’m not enjoying this part because I’m hungry”. I really really wanted to love this book. 

But I’m going to sleep on it before I decide. I have legit cried because I am not 100% crazy about this book. How odd is that?

Slept on it. It’s a bummer but I can’t give this book 4 stars. There were parts I legitimately enjoyed a lot but most of it I just sort of liked or was meh about. I feel like the book needed a more active editor and more honest early readers. But I really feel this would have been a great collection of essays on the internet and fame on the internet. I liked the plot but the themes were basically spelled out in essays anyway. 

I also am not sure I think the social commentary in the book was done very deftly. It felt very general, kind of like a bunch of tweets that might start a great thread but were starting broad to pull people in. It was odd for first person to feel too broad. 

The pacing was super off. I literally put it down multiple times in the middle of scenes. If I hadn’t been determined to finish this in one day (I took the day off to read this) I might have read this book very very slowly because I would feel like “yes now I am completely hooked” then something would change and I would put the book down and not remember why. 

I will be reading book two. Because I did like the last few pages. But I will be better prepared in case I don’t like it.

This is the bit I feel the most guilty about: I am not sure this book would have been published in this form if Hank Green wasn’t Hank Green. I am not sure about this. Obviously. But I really think the book’s pacing and character voice would have been further refined, and the tone would have had more variance throughout the book. 

I feel very guilty about that last bit, it’s not on my Goodreads review because I feel like authors tend to read their Goodreads reviews when they are feeling shitty. And I have followed Hank for years and feel slightly protective over him. Which is odd. I also don’t want to assume the thing I disliked about the book is inherently true. I hate reading reviews of books I loved and seeing people trash the book and give objective statements about a largely subjective medium. But I think that maybe when you have power and have friends having people who like you as ‘an internet person’ or people who are very close friends aren’t great objective voices. Even if they think they are. 

So I didn’t hate the book. I didn’t love the book. I will read book two. But not loving this doesn’t mean I can’t keep loving vlogbrothers and scishow and the like.

I gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads and finished it on September 25th, 2018.