The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell is all about cognitive biases and the power of magical thinking. Montell also wrote the bestselling book Cultish, which I thoroughly enjoyed. She knows how to write a non-fiction book in a way that completely sucks you in and keep you interested. Here's one of the sections that I found interesting: 'We're living in what they call the 'Information Age,' but life only seems to be making less sense. We're isolated, listless, burnt out on screens, cutting loved ones out like tumors in the spirit of 'boundaries,' failing to understand other people's choices or even our own. The machine is malfunctioning, and we're trying to think our way out of it." While I preferred her book Cultish, I still really enjoyed this book and her perspective on how people think and function during this time where we're all on our phones and trying to take care of our issues by thinking positively. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital review copy. All opinions are my own.

This was such a fun and interesting book! I am so thankful to NetGalley, Atria Books and Amanda Montell for the eARC!! I saw this on Goodreads most anticipated books of 2024 at the end of last year and just KNEW I needed to get my hands on it.

As someone who overthinks constantly, about what other people think about me, how my actions are received, why I am not getting certain jobs or opportunities, why people aren't asking me to hang out with them, etc... (HELP) this was both extremely eye-opening and extremely validating! I really enjoyed learning about all the different types of cognitive biases, especially ones I knew nothing about, or those that I could finally put an actual name to.

I am not a huge non-fiction gal, but this kept me engaged the entire time! There was a perfect blend of humor and anecdotes intertwined with the educational aspect and notes from other professionals, which was a great way to format what could have been such a dense subject. I have already recommended this book to multiple friends and I cannot wait to keep sharing it with people!

As someone who works in the performing arts, overthinking is practically second nature, as we are constantly putting ourselves literally on the line for other people to decide our fate and if we are deserving of a job... WOAH. I loved that Montell included a handful of anecdotes directly regarding actors/performers -- I felt very seen while reading this! I also found the sections on manifestation verrrrry interesting and thought-provoking. I flew through this and look forward to revisiting it in the future!

This was an interesting read, but it's not one that will stick with me the same way that this author's previous book Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism did.

I loved this book as I have every other book from this author. I have never found another nonfiction author whose writing is so easy to read and digest. I feel like I’m talking to a really smart friend the whole time. The subject matter felt very hard hitting and relevant. I only wish we had a little more of a conclusion at the end. Im so excited for everyone to pick this up !!

Thanks to @atriabooks for sharing an advance copy of The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell, out April 9th!

I’ve been a fan of Montell’s since Wordslut, and TAOMO is no exception; a book about cognitive biases in the instantaneous-and-incessant-information-age? Sold.

Fans of Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino will enjoy the similar blend of memoir, cultural commentary, and research that this book brings to the table — not an overwhelmingly deep dive, but one that contextualizes much of the millennial experience.

Fans of Cultish will appreciate the chapter on the sunk cost fallacy, where Montell speaks about her own cult-like experience in an abusive relationship.

I flew through this and can already see myself recommending it — it’s an insightful look at why we are the way we are and how we got here, from Stone Age amygdalas to TikTok trends and everything in between.

📸: I’m holding a kindle displaying the ebook cover of The Age of Magical Overthinking.

3.5 rounded up to 4 - I love how Amanda Montell's brain works and her compelling writing made each chapter an interesting read. Her linguistic background and relatable anxieties offered a good blend of research, new terms, and personal anecdotes.

I'm not sure if the book does enough to tie it all together. It felt a bit incomplete or like I was missing something when I got to the end. It's an interesting read but I'm not sure it offers enough to have a lasting impact for me.

With the wit and approachability of your smartest, funniest friend, Montell lays out several ways our own brains play tricks on us and how this leads to phenomena we see in the post-COVID world. For example, she explains how the halo effect creates rabid stans. Or how the IKEA effect leads to creators valuing their own work more highly than the work of others.

But she's not standing removed from the subject and speaking with detached expertise. Montell often shares how she has engaged in some of these cognitive biases. Her willingness to humorously "get in the trenches" with her subject matter reminds me of the style of Mary Roach -- one of the highest compliments I can dole out. I loved this book and will be recommending it to lots of people in my life.

If you are not normally a non-fiction reader and you want to dip your toes in, this is a great book to start with! The content is very interesting, relevant to modern life, and presented engagingly.

Thank you Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me a free advance reader copy of this book. These opinions are my own.

Review be posted to Goodreads and Instagram on April 7, 2024.

The Age of Magical Overthinking is another knockout from Amanda Montell. I loved Wordslut from Montell, and her riveting and funny tone carries through to The Age of Magical Overthinking. THis book is a bit different than her novels - Cultish and Wordslut. This book is a collection of "notes" all centered around the age of overthinking. The essays a relatable, poignant and hilarious, but I do think I prepfer her other novels more than a collection of essay. Check out this collection which released on April 9, 2024.

"We’re living in what they call the “Information Age,” but life only seems to be making less sense. We’re isolated, listless, burnt out on screens, cutting loved ones out like tumors in the spirit of “boundaries,” failing to understand other people’s choices or even our own. The machine is malfunctioning, and we’re trying to think our way out of it."

"Magical thinking can be broadly defined as the belief that ones internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world"

"It makes as much sense that pop idols’ queer stans tend to be some of the most zealous, so often deprived of the parenting they need."

“The universe has your back” sounds like a positive affirmation. But to me, it’s still a conspiracy theory, because it plays into the narrative that the universe cares— that it could be out to get you if it wanted to. Nature does not “care” like that. If it has intentions, they’re not of the human kind.

"take something away. This inclination is especially hard to resist as consumerists, who are conditioned to believe that in order to fix something, you’ve got to add a gadget, an app, a supplement, a paragraph, a person, instead of stepping back, taking stock of everything in front of you, and considering that the problem might actually be solved by scaling down."

"There was a limited quantity of light in the universe, I was sure, and merely learning that someone else was burning bright dimmed me. This kind of scarcity-minded sorrow is rooted in zero-sum bias: the false intuition that another party’s gain directly means your loss."

"How ironic that the people I might’ve clicked with best were those who made me want to get rid of all my mirrors and lobotomize myself?"

“When you meet a woman who is intimidatingly witty, stylish, beautiful, and professionally accomplished, befriend her. Surrounding yourself with the best people doesn’t make you look worse by comparison. It makes you better.  .  . True confidence is infectious.”

Excellent and accessible book exploring cognitive bias in an approachable tone with myriad examples. Will absolutely recommend to my kids and friends. I think it provides an easy on-ramp for curiosity about why we think the way that we do and how to ask more questions about it rather than digging in our heels when our views are challenged.

4.25 stars

I became a fan of Amanda Montell once I read her previous nonfiction work Cultish, and continued to be a fan as I ingested the back catalog of her podcast Sounds Like a Cult. The Age of Magical Overthinking is a mix of psychological science and personal stories, as Montell teaches the reader about several different cognitive biases with examples from her own life and our larger popular culture. For example, the first chapter, "Are You Our Mother, Taylor Swift?" describes the halo effect, or the tendency to make someone seem more perfect than they are based on one single known trait. Montell also describes other psychological phenomen such as zero-sum bias, recency illusion, and declinism. I found this educational, engaging, and super approachable even if you don't have any background in psychology. I wish there would have been a final chapter with a summary or something for the reader to leave with, but I really enjoyed this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell--After enjoying the author's previous books Wordslut and Cultish, I was pleased to get an advance digital copy of this upcoming release (April 9). Montell hits a home run with this book about magical thinking and cognitive biases that are prevalent in our current day. From the halo effect to the sunk cost fallacy to the Ikea effect, readers will see themselves in the pages and also gain empathy for our overthinking selves. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Firstly. Let it be known. I am a huge Amanda Montell fan. I have loved all of her books. And was so so excited to receive an advanced reading copy of this new book!

I feel like this work was quite different to the previous works in that the others were like vague concepts I kind of was aware of but after reading it felt like I had learned so much about sexism in language and cultish behaviors. In this one it felt like thoughts or rants I previously have had with loved ones or in my own head but then Montell took those thoughts and researched the hell out of them and eloquently put them in essays.

Overall it was an interesting experience that either validated my thoughts or turned them on their head and now I have to sit with that lol.

I recommend all of her books.

Thanks to NetGalley and atria books for an eARC.

Full of astute observations, dry humor, and just the right amount of academic influence tempered with self-reflection, this book was an absolute delight. Thought-provoking and obviously well-researched (y’all know I love a good footnote), Amanda Montell delivers yet another wildly fascinating deep dive, this time focusing on eleven different cognitive biases, providing easy-to-digest explanations for everything from the sunk cost fallacy to confirmation bias, and illustrating how these biases manifest in our modern, hyper-online culture. This book will make you think and make you laugh in equal degrees, and honestly, what more could you ask for?

Pub Date: 4/9/24
Review Published: 4/4/24
eARC received from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the Author, Publisher and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was great. I love Amanda's writing and the style of this book. It's a perfect blend of relfection and critique of modern culture. I will continue to read anything she publishes!

I dropped EVERYTHING to read this. It was my most anticipated release of 2024 for multiple reasons. Firstly, Cultish was one of my top reads of 2023. I became an instant Amanda Montell fan. Secondly, the title: The Age of Magical Overthinking. Truly enticing to an anxious millennial like me. Lastly, I’m a communicator by education and profession, and I almost minored in psychology, so I was inherently intrigued by the combination of linguistics and cognitive biases.

Montell has mastered one of my favorite brands of nonfiction, blending psychology and personal narrative. I feel like I’ve learned something every time I read her work. In this case, she explores cognitive biases and the power they have over our post-pandemic brains, with each chapter covering a different concept. She’s able to effortlessly take trendy, relevant vernacular (“manifesting,” “delulu,” “mother”) make it scientific, but also explain it as though you’re having a deep conversation with a friend. I don’t think I’ve ever highlighted more from a single book.

Chapter by chapter, I found myself saying out loud “HOW is she reading my mind?!” If you’re a Swiftie (like me), I’d especially recommend picking this up because – whoa – the halo effect had me feeling exposed. Even the IKEA effect is so relevant; it could explain my newfound obsession with people on Instagram who make cute clothes out of thrifted tablecloths. The sunk cost fallacy is also incredibly appropriate for bookstagrammers. It could easily explain why some of us can’t DNF a book because we feel we’ve invested too much time/money in it.

I’m happy to report that this book was nowhere near a sunk cost for me, and I’d recommend it to anyone. Five stars!

Thanks to Atria/One Signal Publishers and NetGalley for the digital advance copy in exchange for my honest review. This will be published on April 9, 2024.

I've heard of both of Amanda Montell's previous books and have been reading to read them and when I saw the title and cover of this, I was intrigued. Montell argues that the zeitgeist of the past couple of years has been magical overthinking or being clouded by our cognitive biases.

You can easily see her love of language come through in her writing and I enjoyed learning about a few more of the biases we suffer from. Overall, though, I found the style of narration to be meandering and rather than focus on being informative, each cognitive bias was examined from Montell's experiences which wasn't as satisfying to read about.

Overall, a well-researched read and I definitely will be reading her other two books as well. I also love the cover art for the book. Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for the e-copy!

3.5/5

Brilliant. The Age of Magical Overthinking is a collection of essays about the irrational behaviors we all have in this modern era, where a big part of society is influenced by social media. Each essay describes a different bias and is supported with scientific studies, which I thought were very well explained. The writing is entertaining, easy to follow and at times, funny. I didn't know the author until I picked up this book and now I'm looking forward to check out more of her work. Very worth the read.

"The Age of Magical Overthinking" by Amanda Montell is a captivating blend of cultural critique and personal reflection that left me both entertained and enlightened. Montell, renowned for her sharp wit and keen insights, takes readers on a journey through the labyrinth of our cognitive biases, offering a compelling exploration of the power and pitfalls of magical thinking.

Montell's writing is as witty and brilliant as ever, seamlessly weaving together anecdotes and research to illustrate complex concepts in a relatable and accessible manner. Each chapter is a thought-provoking exploration of a different cognitive bias, from the "Halo effect" to the "Sunk Cost Fallacy," offering readers a deeper understanding of how our minds work and why we often fall prey to irrational thinking.

But what truly sets this book apart is Montell's ability to infuse her analysis with empathy and hope. Despite delving into the sometimes absurd ways in which our brains operate, Montell never loses sight of the humanity behind our cognitive quirks. Instead, she offers a message of forgiveness and understanding, reminding us that we are all struggling to make sense of a chaotic world.

"The Age of Magical Overthinking" is a must-read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the human mind. Whether you're a psychology enthusiast or simply curious about why we think the way we do, Montell's book will leave you entertained, enlightened, and eager to embrace a more rational approach to life. Highly recommended.

I am an Amanda Montell fan for life. I adore anything she writes. This book is so poignant and relatable, discussing our post-Covid world and consciousness with care and personal anecdotes.

If Amanda Montell writes it, I will read it and love it.

I'm a huge fan of Montell from her podcast and this book just made me a bigger fan! I love the memoir/pop science essay format and learned so much while being wildly entertained.