Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

6 reviews

imstephtacular's review

challenging funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

This book is a banger! I am definitely the intended audience as a chronically online white female millennial existential overthinker with an English degree so bear that in mind when picking it up

I was riveted by every section (the Taylor swift chapter particularly kicked me right in the gut) and I kept rereading quotes aloud to my coworkers, my husband, anyone who would listen because I was learning so much, things were making sense, and I was overwhelmed by the day to day machinations that actually gave scientific names ascribed to them

Parts of this felt too cerebral and the language over my head so I simply allowed those to wash over me while I still retained the general ideas

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jehansen127's review against another edition

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funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

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zydecovivo's review against another edition

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informative reflective fast-paced

4.25

I saw this book in the Fable April newsletter. I should’ve read the summary a bit more or looked into the author because it was not as I expected based on the title. I thought the book was going to be on how to address overthinking and thought spirals caused by anxiety. The book focuses more on so-called “magical thinking”, the belief that unrelated events are causally connected, particularly as a result of supernatural effects, especially in the context of obsession and social media. I probably would’ve understood this if I’d seen that the author had also written a book and done podcasts on cults. Montell looks at society and the deterioration of relationships between people in our modern age from both an outside and inside perspective. I appreciate her personal anecdotes and the way she explains her experiences, their causes, and her own thoughts and reflections. Most of the psychological/buzzword terms, such as sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, and the recency illusion, I have heard of and already understood from psych101, but this may be a good introductory book for anyone not as familiar or who needs more modern examples. I admit the book didn’t exactly pull me in and keep my attention (I was listening on audiobook), but I think it was due to my prior knowledge and/or general headspace while listening. I probably shouldn’t have listened to a book about how we’re all being manipulated to buy things and hate each other during work. Overall, still a good book and thought-provoking. May come back to it because I don’t think I got everything out of it that I could have.

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sdupont's review

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informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Amanda Montell writes nonfiction in such an engaging and thought provoking style. She will have you emotionally connecting to the psychology behind each topic. Amanda has an uncanny ability to invoke existential dread and hope within the same chapter. I devoured this book and definitely recommend it for fans of Cultish!

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clarabooksit's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

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meganpbell's review

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funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

What does our worship (or opposite) of Taylor Swift have to do with the Halo Effect? What does AI mean for our love of tactile work aka the IKEA Effect? In these essays on cognitive biases in our modern age, Cultish author Amanda Montell pulls together memoir, cultural criticism, and social science and blazes new neural pathways to identifying and understanding these “mental magic tricks” we pull on ourselves, to lively, accessible effect.

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