I have a solid track record with Amanda Montell books. I rated her first two books, Wordslut and Cultish four stars and I talked about them a lot in my non-online life. To the point that my coworker who listens to Montell’s podcast, Sounds Like a Cult, convinced my other coworkers to pre-order her third book for my birthday this year (and get me to start listening to the podcast).
I wasn’t sure what to expect with The Age of Magical Overthinking even with its subtitle Notes on Modern Irrationality. But then I got a look at the table of contents, and it all became a bit clearer. This is a book about cognitive biases. In The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell takes the position that living in the modern information age has short-circuited our brain’s coping mechanisms built over hundreds of thousands of years, causing our irrationality to spiral out of control. Montell does justice to the first half of that argument well, but perhaps leans a bit too much on personal lived experiences to shore up the latter.
Which isn’t to say that Montell doesn’t do the research on the topic – she absolutely does and leaders in a variety of fields are interviewed and published studies referenced throughout.* But the difference, to me, is that Montell’s earlier books relied in large part on her knowledge of linguistics and her ability to break it down for the non-specialist to bring the parts together into a satisfying whole. I think The Age of Magical Overthinking falls down for me in comparison to her earlier books because Montell doesn’t bring her own particular specialty to bear, instead relying more heavily on personal storytelling.
It is obvious in the reading – and confirmed in the acknowledgements – that this is the book Montell felt compelled to write, perhaps needed to write. The launching of a second podcast also hints to how Montell is managing her own thought spiral behaviors by deep diving topics that she’s been overthinking about. This book is part of Montell making peace with her own mind and hoping that we are all able to as well, by naming and understanding what special weirdness our brains all do (and why I’ve chosen Detente as its Bingo square). Certainly, a goal worth pursuing, I just wish I liked it better.
*In fact it leads to one of my favorite anecdotes in the entire book. Montell asked everyone she interviewed if time travel were possible, was there another time they’d like to live in? Every single therapist, historian, and behavioral economist said no! Go us!
CBR Sweet 16 Book: Exciting. It’s not everyday friends pre-order you a book by an author you love.
Bingo Square: Detente.