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3.99 AVERAGE
3.99 AVERAGE
This was--disappointingly--not a very good book. It started out strong, with interesting characters with some good things to overcome. But a shift happens and the bulk of the book's execution heads in a different direction than the beginning of the book. While reading through that section I felt adrift, unsettled, and grumpy that there had been a bait and switch. In the last bit the book shifts back and an unnecessary additional thing is piled on to that part of the plot.
The kicker is that the writing is quite good. I leave you with a number of delightful quotes I flagged.
"Iverton, Illinois, is the personification of its resident youth: someone gave it the keys, a credit card, and no curfew, and now it thinks its shit doesn't stink. The suburb is populated by these gaudy, homogeneous brick houses, each a clone of the one next to it; driveways and garages are stocked with a variety of shiny SUVs, lawns are pushed to the greenest of greens, and trees grow in suspiciously symmetrical fashion."
"Will and Jake Longmire felt out of the douche tree and hit every nozzle on the way down. Also, and not entirely unrelated, they're really good looking, but in the same way Lochte or the Hemsworth brothers might be called good looking, by which I mean, when one sees them, one senses the overwhelming urge to punch them in the face."
"Pontius Pilot is a Chicago-based recording artist who performed in the Iverton High School auditorium last year as a reward for our junior class having a decent magazine fundraiser. Nothing takes the wind out of a concert's sails like a Tuesday morning billing; even so, the student council dubbed the event Magazine Mega Gala, and, like that, Pontius Pilot became a legend. Though collectively, the Iverton High populace felt about his music the way one feels about their fourth-grade soccer trophy, or the crinkle-cut fries in the cafeteria: it's a nostalgic love, weak at the root."
"Sometimes talking with a sibling is like hiking in a foreign country only to round a corner and find your house. Penny and I are so different in so many ways--and yet, I know this place well."
One final note. I very much appreciate this movie for calling out the horrible racism present, via Micky Rooney's character, in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. The more people can get the word out, the fewer people will have to experience the slack-jawed discomfort I did.
The kicker is that the writing is quite good. I leave you with a number of delightful quotes I flagged.
"Iverton, Illinois, is the personification of its resident youth: someone gave it the keys, a credit card, and no curfew, and now it thinks its shit doesn't stink. The suburb is populated by these gaudy, homogeneous brick houses, each a clone of the one next to it; driveways and garages are stocked with a variety of shiny SUVs, lawns are pushed to the greenest of greens, and trees grow in suspiciously symmetrical fashion."
"Will and Jake Longmire felt out of the douche tree and hit every nozzle on the way down. Also, and not entirely unrelated, they're really good looking, but in the same way Lochte or the Hemsworth brothers might be called good looking, by which I mean, when one sees them, one senses the overwhelming urge to punch them in the face."
"Pontius Pilot is a Chicago-based recording artist who performed in the Iverton High School auditorium last year as a reward for our junior class having a decent magazine fundraiser. Nothing takes the wind out of a concert's sails like a Tuesday morning billing; even so, the student council dubbed the event Magazine Mega Gala, and, like that, Pontius Pilot became a legend. Though collectively, the Iverton High populace felt about his music the way one feels about their fourth-grade soccer trophy, or the crinkle-cut fries in the cafeteria: it's a nostalgic love, weak at the root."
"Sometimes talking with a sibling is like hiking in a foreign country only to round a corner and find your house. Penny and I are so different in so many ways--and yet, I know this place well."
One final note. I very much appreciate this movie for calling out the horrible racism present, via Micky Rooney's character, in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. The more people can get the word out, the fewer people will have to experience the slack-jawed discomfort I did.
5 - "it was amazing"
The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is about Noah Oakman, a sixteen-year-old soon to be high school senior, faced with making some big decisions. College. It doesn't help that his parents are on his back about it since he has the chance to secure a swimming scholarship. Except... he no longer wants to be on the swimming team. In fact, he no longer wants to participate in anything in his life. He wants change, a completely new trajectory, a different life and soon he'll realize you should be careful with what you wish for.
This book blew my mind. I was hooked from the beginning. I love the way the book is written with its unique chapters - the concise histories and passages of time. I really understood who the narrator, Noah Oakman, was. I found myself reading and reading, completely immersed. Yet still shocked that I didn't even read 100 pages in each sitting (pgs. 88, 171, 265, until I finished the book but I paused throughout the day on July 18). There is so much information and stories packed into these pages, the really good, entertaining, and fascinating kind.
This book is full of so much wisdom, growth, and histories. It's not a story of Noah Oakman, it's a story of everyone's lives, how we all intertwine with one another in this timeline. We all have our own story, and we all have the ability to impact one another with just one simple fleeting moment.
I really enjoyed navigating Noah's world and his strange fascinations with him. The stories behind each one were amazing. This book is amazing. I kept getting ideas for tattoos inspired by this book, so you can see it made quite an impact on me for me to consider getting something "permanent" (everything, including this body, is temporary) on my body.
I'll admit I'm really disappointed Mila Henry isn't a real author. I would've loved to read her work. David Arnold basically wrote a book inside of this book, 2 books in one. An impressive feat. I also appreciated the sketches but disappointed it wasn't consistent throughout the book, I enjoyed them.
Please go read this, you won't regret it.
The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is about Noah Oakman, a sixteen-year-old soon to be high school senior, faced with making some big decisions. College. It doesn't help that his parents are on his back about it since he has the chance to secure a swimming scholarship. Except... he no longer wants to be on the swimming team. In fact, he no longer wants to participate in anything in his life. He wants change, a completely new trajectory, a different life and soon he'll realize you should be careful with what you wish for.
This book blew my mind. I was hooked from the beginning. I love the way the book is written with its unique chapters - the concise histories and passages of time. I really understood who the narrator, Noah Oakman, was. I found myself reading and reading, completely immersed. Yet still shocked that I didn't even read 100 pages in each sitting (pgs. 88, 171, 265, until I finished the book but I paused throughout the day on July 18). There is so much information and stories packed into these pages, the really good, entertaining, and fascinating kind.
This book is full of so much wisdom, growth, and histories. It's not a story of Noah Oakman, it's a story of everyone's lives, how we all intertwine with one another in this timeline. We all have our own story, and we all have the ability to impact one another with just one simple fleeting moment.
I really enjoyed navigating Noah's world and his strange fascinations with him. The stories behind each one were amazing. This book is amazing. I kept getting ideas for tattoos inspired by this book, so you can see it made quite an impact on me for me to consider getting something "permanent" (everything, including this body, is temporary) on my body.
I'll admit I'm really disappointed Mila Henry isn't a real author. I would've loved to read her work. David Arnold basically wrote a book inside of this book, 2 books in one. An impressive feat. I also appreciated the sketches but disappointed it wasn't consistent throughout the book, I enjoyed them.
Please go read this, you won't regret it.
A wonderful tale of the power of friendship and family, the struggles lonely people face and how the mind can be tricky. My only question is: Was all just a dream or did really Circuit produced Noah's experience through hypnosis?
‘I want to hug Penny, and so I do, and I tell her she can still love this flawed thing. I tell her it will be a different love, a little sadder maybe, but wiser, too. I tell her that if we can’t love flawed things, we probably wouldn’t love anything at all.’
The best book I read in 2019! This is a fantastic book that has a very unique premise. Noah has four very unique fascinations. Two I think are the most interesting are: daily he watches this video of the of a lady who takes a picture of herself every day for forty years. And there is a picture a disgraced singer that was left after he stormed out of a school presentation, it is of this younger man and it has a very odd inscription on the back.
After getting in a rut in his life, Noah ends up getting hypnotized. Everything is off, even in the smallest ways, but his strange fascinations are the same. Trying to get back to normal, he decides to try and look for the people in his strange fascinations for answers.
I was very skeptical about how this book was going to end. I thought it would be a bad cliché, like ‘waking up, it was all a dream’. But it was a great ending, and one I wasn’t expecting! Would definitely recommend this book!
The best book I read in 2019! This is a fantastic book that has a very unique premise. Noah has four very unique fascinations. Two I think are the most interesting are: daily he watches this video of the of a lady who takes a picture of herself every day for forty years. And there is a picture a disgraced singer that was left after he stormed out of a school presentation, it is of this younger man and it has a very odd inscription on the back.
After getting in a rut in his life, Noah ends up getting hypnotized. Everything is off, even in the smallest ways, but his strange fascinations are the same. Trying to get back to normal, he decides to try and look for the people in his strange fascinations for answers.
I was very skeptical about how this book was going to end. I thought it would be a bad cliché, like ‘waking up, it was all a dream’. But it was a great ending, and one I wasn’t expecting! Would definitely recommend this book!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EXCITED I AM FOR THIS BOOK IT'S BEEN AT LEAST 2 YEARS SINCE I'VE READ A DAVID ARNOLD BOOK AND I MISS HIS OBSCURE AMAZING WRITING IN MY LIFE AND NOW IT'S COMING BACK AND I'M GOING TO HAVE IT AGAIN. (Also I wanna reread Mosquitoland and Kids of Appetite before this releases)
After I read it: This book was everything I wanted and more. It was, as the title states, strange, but in the best way possible. The humor was obscure, and there were so many things that happened that I was like "that would only happen in a David Arnold book" but it was awesome to read. I knew from the cover, the title, and the blurb that this book wasn't going to be your average YA novel. And it definitely was. It was one of those novels that stands out to you so much because you know you can't find anything like it from anyone else. I think that's why I love David Arnold's writing so much. It's so different, so peculiar, that it stands out to you. I also loved that this book touched A LOT on mental health and our relationships with each other. To be honest, the plot was obviously engaging, but I think the big part of this novel was the characters and they way they interact with each others. This book felt like a study, to me, of how well we know each other and our connections with our friends. It was super fascinating and I loved that. Plus, even the side characters are extremely enjoyable, which I loved because I love side characters that you grow attached to. There were also so many different aspects of this book that I loved. It was super interesting because Noah writes these "concise histories" in which he connects things in history, so it was super cool to learn things that I never would have learned before. He talks a lot about dates and how often times things in history connect which was so interesting and I loved it. Plus the book had a lot of really excellent quotes and there were a lot of moments with Noah where I could totally relate. I thought the aspect of mental health and being scared of your future was really well done. David Arnold is largely known for writing books that touch upon the subject of mental health (especially Mosquitoland) and Noah Hypnotik definitely did not lack that. It was super cool to see difficult subjects like guilt, pushing people away, fear of the future, etc to be talked about. And it was very nice because in the end Noah does get better. Plus I related to a lot of Noah's struggles. I related to pushing people away and not wanting other people to control your future and all of those things. Also, like I said before, it was really nice to see all of Noah's relationships shown as important. From his relationship with his mom to his relationship with his two best friends, I felt like all of the relationships were complex and fully fleshed out. I loved that the book almost felt like an analysis of our relationships with others. I felt like it developed the complexity of human interactions and I thought that was super neat. You see that none of Noah's relationships are perfect, which I love. Plus you see Noah realize that he does push people away/mistreat his friends sometimes and he tries to better himself and he grows to appreciate certain people more. Speaking of characters, I feel like I can't finish this review without talking about a certain one: Penny Oakman. I love her so much. She's Noah's sister and she's in 8th grade and she wears all of these strange clothes and she obsesses over movies and she cares deeply about racism and I just want to protect her. Her relationship with Noah was byfar my favorite to follow, because they have such a complicated relationship throughout the whole novel. You see that he definitely neglects her, but as the novel goes on he tries to be there for her more. Before ending this review, I'd also like to talk about the science fiction aspect of the novel. After a party and one strange night, Noah finds that small details of his life have changed. His mom now has a scar that wasn't there before, his best friend who was previously a hardcore DC fan is now a Marvel fan, etc, etc. This is the main plot of the novel (although I'd argue that the novel is more about our relationships with other people) and it's super interesting to see. In the end, it turns out that Overall, I just really loved this book. I think it was my favorite David Arnold book to date. It was strange, funny, and touched on a lot of important subjects. I highly recommend it.
After I read it: This book was everything I wanted and more. It was, as the title states, strange, but in the best way possible. The humor was obscure, and there were so many things that happened that I was like "that would only happen in a David Arnold book" but it was awesome to read. I knew from the cover, the title, and the blurb that this book wasn't going to be your average YA novel. And it definitely was. It was one of those novels that stands out to you so much because you know you can't find anything like it from anyone else. I think that's why I love David Arnold's writing so much. It's so different, so peculiar, that it stands out to you. I also loved that this book touched A LOT on mental health and our relationships with each other. To be honest, the plot was obviously engaging, but I think the big part of this novel was the characters and they way they interact with each others. This book felt like a study, to me, of how well we know each other and our connections with our friends. It was super fascinating and I loved that. Plus, even the side characters are extremely enjoyable, which I loved because I love side characters that you grow attached to. There were also so many different aspects of this book that I loved. It was super interesting because Noah writes these "concise histories" in which he connects things in history, so it was super cool to learn things that I never would have learned before. He talks a lot about dates and how often times things in history connect which was so interesting and I loved it. Plus the book had a lot of really excellent quotes and there were a lot of moments with Noah where I could totally relate. I thought the aspect of mental health and being scared of your future was really well done. David Arnold is largely known for writing books that touch upon the subject of mental health (especially Mosquitoland) and Noah Hypnotik definitely did not lack that. It was super cool to see difficult subjects like guilt, pushing people away, fear of the future, etc to be talked about. And it was very nice because in the end Noah does get better. Plus I related to a lot of Noah's struggles. I related to pushing people away and not wanting other people to control your future and all of those things. Also, like I said before, it was really nice to see all of Noah's relationships shown as important. From his relationship with his mom to his relationship with his two best friends, I felt like all of the relationships were complex and fully fleshed out. I loved that the book almost felt like an analysis of our relationships with others. I felt like it developed the complexity of human interactions and I thought that was super neat. You see that none of Noah's relationships are perfect, which I love. Plus you see Noah realize that he does push people away/mistreat his friends sometimes and he tries to better himself and he grows to appreciate certain people more. Speaking of characters, I feel like I can't finish this review without talking about a certain one: Penny Oakman. I love her so much. She's Noah's sister and she's in 8th grade and she wears all of these strange clothes and she obsesses over movies and she cares deeply about racism and I just want to protect her. Her relationship with Noah was byfar my favorite to follow, because they have such a complicated relationship throughout the whole novel. You see that he definitely neglects her, but as the novel goes on he tries to be there for her more. Before ending this review, I'd also like to talk about the science fiction aspect of the novel. After a party and one strange night, Noah finds that small details of his life have changed. His mom now has a scar that wasn't there before, his best friend who was previously a hardcore DC fan is now a Marvel fan, etc, etc. This is the main plot of the novel (although I'd argue that the novel is more about our relationships with other people) and it's super interesting to see. In the end, it turns out that
Spoiler
he was under a simulation for "3 months" (actually 6 hours). This was so so interesting to see because eventually you see that everything was so well planned out and David Arnold clearly intended this from the beginning, which is so cool. Small things that you previously overlooked turn out to have a lot of significance, which was really clever. I know some people won't like the concept that the whole novel is essentially (for the most part, at least) a dream. But I think it was really well done. David Arnold didn't just make it a way to end the novel mysteriously, it actually had purpose. The simulation ended up largely affecting Noah and showing him ways to be different and to do better. Plus, the dream time is extremely fascinating and it isn't just a disappointment when you find out it was a simulation. Also the whole science was super cool to read!
I had high expectations for this book, and I was not disappointed. Mark as a must read!
A fun read that almost escapes its YA dungeon, but is dragged back down by uncanny valley moments. I enjoyed it overall, but there were moments where I was almost ready to put it down. Felt tricked by the plot twist, and felt I had been baited into caring about a whole set of situations and events that were eventually shown to be other than presented. Not cool, not forgiven. It was hard to care after that.
"I romanticize my past and I romanticize my future; right now is always the bleakest moment of my life."
This book is absolutely brilliant and I. Loved. It.
This book is absolutely brilliant and I. Loved. It.
So I'm less than 40 minutes in and my eyes are rolling so far into my head. My current mood is so NOT whiny privileged white boys who are good at everything without even trying....I really hope this gets better.
UPDATE: I was sucked in once the 'hypnotism' finally happened and I found myself liking it in spite of the really annoying and pretentious main character. I quite liked the twist but then found the ending also a little blah. My feelings are really all over the place on this one, as you can tell!
UPDATE: I was sucked in once the 'hypnotism' finally happened and I found myself liking it in spite of the really annoying and pretentious main character. I quite liked the twist but then found the ending also a little blah. My feelings are really all over the place on this one, as you can tell!
LOVED IT
I don't know if I could recommend it though... It was quirky and peculiar and had the whole Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind vibe and I love those kinds of books.
The main character was relatable and it was fun putting all the puzzle pieces together and the message was heartfelt and touching. The humor was spot on and the characters all felt so real.
Basically this book checked all the boxes for me and then some.
5/5 stars, loved every bit of it!
I don't know if I could recommend it though... It was quirky and peculiar and had the whole Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind vibe and I love those kinds of books.
The main character was relatable and it was fun putting all the puzzle pieces together and the message was heartfelt and touching. The humor was spot on and the characters all felt so real.
Basically this book checked all the boxes for me and then some.
5/5 stars, loved every bit of it!