So you read “The Fault in Our Stars” or watched John Green on YouTube, and, if you’re like me, you probably thought, “I would read or watch anything this mind produced for public consumption.” Even if it’s a nonfiction thesis on tuberculosis arguing why it should be Public Enemy No. 1 and on its way to eradication.

Because, in true Green fashion, there’s a footnote on the copyright page explaining the reasoning behind the font choice for his new book, “Everything is Tuberculosis.” (The reason for the font is tuberculosis. Everything is.)

Early on, Green establishes that the tuberculosis is the top killer of humans among infectious diseases. The slow-moving TB infected over 8 million people in one year and killed about 1.25 million, according to a recent World Health Organization report. Yet, as Green shows throughout the book, TB is curable and even preventable.

The text seamlessly moves through related topics, from TB’s effects on history and fashion to the socioeconomic inequities that perpetuate the disease. But this synopsis will seem bone-dry compared to the actual text, because the real magic of Green’s writing is the deeply considerate, human touch that goes into every word. He uses the stories of real people to turn overwhelming problems into something personal and understandable.

As one might expect from Green, the book is weirdly touching and super quotable. “Everything is Tuberculosis” is rich with callbacks that help underscore ideas, wit and humor that foster learning even alongside more somber bits.

Despite the death and harsh realities, it is a hopeful book overall. Green takes stock of the history, looking at the vicious and virtuous cycles that led humankind to where we are now, posing a challenge and a question rolled into one: Which type of cycle will we foster? — Donna Edwards, Associated Press

Critic Sarah Chihaya probes our obsession with books — why they sustain us, how they perhaps cage us, if there can be too many — in her stylish, if uneven, memoir- turned-essays, “Bibliophobia.” It recounts a 2019 mental crisis that pushed her to examine her life.

As the book opens, Chihaya has been hospitalized in New York, frazzled, her capacity to read — her identity — severely compromised. From this narrative linchpin, she unspools her struggles with depression, including three suicide attempts, and the weird space she occupied as a Japanese Canadian who had moved to suburban Cleveland, shoehorned into a kind of cultural estrangement.

Books helped her to assimilate. Chihaya astounds when she sticks close to the texts that molded her. Each chapter features titles that have jolted her from complacency: A.S. Byatt’s “Possession,” Helen DeWitt’s “The Last Samurai” and Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being.” They were lifelines, tossed during low points.

She riffs on systemic racism, family frictions, even an abandoned Green Gables-inspired theme park in Japan. And yet Chihaya draws her focus inward. That insistence on “centering” herself dilutes the impact of “Bibliophobia.” Her twinning of depression and the act of reading is often spot-on, but there’s too much of it, too many names dropped for the sake of showing off.

Quibble aside, “Bibliophobia” speaks eloquently to a primal need, with perspicacious insights throughout and an urgent message about suicide, underscoring that it’s a clinical condition that requires interventions by health care professionals. Chihaya cites memoirs by William Styron and Donald Antrim, which advocate for destigmatization and compassion, giving “Bibliophobia” the emotional oomph it seeks.

As she suggests, it matters less how many books we display on our shelves and more what we do with their contents. — Hamilton Cain, Minnesota Star Tribune