A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

2020 • 464 pages

Ratings86

Average rating4.3

15

This is probably just on me but I have never in my life read a book that discussed gender and race and sexuality in such a great way or at all for that matter. This might be because I don't really ever read contemporaries but I choose to believe, from what I know of Hank Green that he thought about this a lot and included diversity and conversation about it very consciously and with great care.  

I had a moment while listening to the audiobook that made me so stressed or straight up scared that I legit had to pause it. The moment when Maya was being harassed by this guy trying to buy her rocks from her.  It felt so real to me and super comparable to situations I have been in before that I had to stop for a moment. And if a book can make you feel all that you know its goddamn good. 

 Sometimes I felt like the story started getting a little complicated and some parts in it I didn't like that Carl had such long monologues about their origin, though I understand explaining things like that is hard to do otherwise it felt kinda off compared to that way the rest of the story was told. 

And lastly, I kept telling myself not to compare Hanks books with his' brothers, because besides the fact that they are related they are totally different people and the facts that both write books should be irrelevant. However, I can't help it.  I have talked to a friend of mine a lot about how John Greens books always seem to have the same plot. There is one shy and timid main character who meets a very cool and interesting person of the opposite sex who throws metaphors left and right, then shit happens they fall in love and one person dies. Then there is some side character that is in some way diverse and is otherwise completely irrelevant.  But Hank had so much diversity and way more main characters to be invested in. And it actually dealt with there diversities in a very human way instead of pretending like these differences don't shape our lives and experiences of it. 

Sufficed to say I loved it. Tho it had some minor flaws. 

December 15, 2020Report this review