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In case you didn't know, I'm an atheist (also a naturalist).

I enjoyed hearing the stories in this book. I especially appreciated the author comparing and contrasting coming out LGBTQ and coming out as atheist, as well discussions around around intersectionality and community inclusivity.

This was mostly applicable to teaching a group of young students in-person over the course of many months.

I did glean some ideas which may be useful for for my in-person trainings and some ideas which may be useful in an online teaching setting.

If I found myself teaching K-12 I would probably reread this book.

I'm not sure I've read other books with aliens that seemed as believable. This book definitely had moments of discomfort. As a reader, you're meant to feel both xenophobia and xenophilia, hope and despair, often about the same subjects sometimes and sometimes in the same in the same moment.

This book made me think about what it means to be human, what it means to be sentient, what respect means, and how right and wrong are malleable. Nothing is black and white in this book.

I think this book could stand on its own, but it's definitely part of a series and I plan to read the other books in this series eventually.

I'd probably recommend reading this book before reading Enlightenment Now. The facts about the world in it feel memorable and more relatable.

The chapters feel a bit disconnected and sometimes repetitive, but there's a lot of beautiful writing in this book. I especially enjoyed the chapter on maple syrup harvesting and the section on the symbiotic relationship of lichens.

Very short book (90 minute audiobook). I'll probably reread this later if I decide to adopt some of these ideas for my own note-taking system.

I'd recommend this to Cory Doctorow fans. I enjoyed it.

I'm not going to rate this on a five star scale. That's John Green's thing.

I don't normally read romance, young adult contemporary, or fiction revolving around mental health. This was an interesting mix of topics and I'm glad I read this.

John Green's YouTube and podcast episodes are both philisophical and cheesy at times, but enjoyable both despite and because of that. This book is similar. The audiobook I listened to was narrated by Kate Rudd, but I could hear how John Green would read much of it.

There was little plot movement (I suspect this might be common for YA fiction though) and quite a bit of character development, some of it very emotional. I needed to pause and think while listening at various times.

I appreciated this book. I don't know whether you will. If you like John Green in general, you'll probably enjoy it.

I found it really interesting to hear researchers speculate about what these drugs actually do and how they do it. The common sense of a mystical/spiritual experience, even among naturalists/atheists, is interesting. And I'd never considered the difficulty of conducting controlled trials (especially double-blind ones!) with psychedelics.

I also learned things I hadn't known about the history of many psychedelics. I had no idea how much study there was into these drugs and how promising they seemed for some ailments before criminalization. I also didn't know Doug Engelbart ("the mother of all demos") took part in the acid tests.

Whimsical, thought provoking (in a "wow life is weird" way), a bit repetitious. A fun read overall.

For me this was too long of a book for what was in it.

Frequent references to the thousands of years of history on this not-Earth world and the fact that many key terms are invented words make this a very dense book. Density aside, it's also a very long book.

If you enjoy nerding out with lots of philosophical dialogue using not-quite-English words, you may enjoy this as a book. I suspect this story would well as a movie.