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So Yesterday: A Novel
Unavailable
So Yesterday: A Novel
Unavailable
So Yesterday: A Novel
Audiobook6 hours

So Yesterday: A Novel

Written by Scott Westerfeld

Narrated by Scott Brick

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

We are all around you.

You don't think about us much, because we are invisible. Well, not exactly invisible. A lot of us have hair dyed in four colors, or wear five-inch platform sneakers, or carry enough metal in our skin that it's a hassle getting on an airplane. Quite visible, actually, come to think of it.

But we don't wear signs saying what we are. After all, if you knew what we were up to, we couldn't work our magic. We have to observe carefully, and push and prompt you in ways you don't notice. Like good teachers, we let you think you've discovered the truth on your own.

And you need us. Someone has to guide you, to mold you, to make sure that today turns into yesterday on schedule. Because frankly, without us to monitor the situation, who knows what would get crammed down your throats?

It's not like you can just start making your own decisions, after all.

Ever wonder who was the first kid to keep a wallet on a big chunky chain, or wear way-too-big-pants on purpose? What about the mythical first guy who wore his baseball cap backwards? These are the Innovators, the people at the peak of the cool pyramid.

Seventeen-year-old Hunter Braque is a Trend setter, on the second level of the pyramid. His job: find the newest, coolest thing for the retail market. His MO: observe, don't get involved. But from the moment he meets Innovator Jen James, he can't help getting involved in a big way.

Part love story, part mystery, part stinging satire, Scott Westerfeld's spellbinding new novel will make you question everything you've ever believed about how to be cool.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 10, 2006
ISBN9780307283900
Unavailable
So Yesterday: A Novel
Author

Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is the author of ten books for young adults, including Peeps, The Last Days, and the Midnighters trilogy. He was born in Texas in 1963, is married to the Hugo-nominated writer Justine Larbalestier, and splits his time between New York and Sydney. His latest book is Extras, the fourth in the bestselling Uglies series.

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Reviews for So Yesterday

Rating: 3.591375866119096 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

487 ratings46 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Like the fiction version of "Brandwashed". I wonder if the kids that read this realize that a lot of the story is true? I'd give it four stars except the occasional swear word bugged me and was unnecessarily distracting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Perfectly fluffy and fun - a mystery/adventure about teenage cool hunters in Manhattan. The narrator sounded a little too mature for the character, but I appreciate that he wasn't overdoing it to sound younger.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not one of his best book but readable.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Quick book. Moderately entertaining. :D
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read So Yesterday because I wanted to read something similar to Feed. The only resemblance between the two is their exploration of consumerist culture. Where Feed seeps into your mind and presents a dystopia in which the environment and language is crumbling and falling apart, So Yesterday is set in present day New York City and examines how 'cool' is spread and manipulated by corporate branding. Jen and Hunter search throughout the city to find their missing boss and the anti-client, but the plot was only as tense as you wanted it to be.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    So glad I stumbled upon this title! A cute read with a bit of mystery and romance.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I didn't like this one as much as I would like. It just made me want to go and read M.T. Anderson's Feed again (which in my opinion can't be matched for a view of the greedy, corporate future). Not bad, but slight in comparison to other futuristic dystopias. I'd like to read the Uglies trilogy someday, since that's really what Westerfeld is known for.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book reminded me of "Ready Player One", with less silly action scenes (which were the best part of that book) and cyberpunk influence. Maybe it was the pop culture references and branding, or the self-conscious examination of "cool" and teenaged melodrama.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a favorite in high school, and I still really like it, but it has definitely aged over the ten years since it was published! I suppose it was inevitable that a book about whats current and trendy would become dated so fast (although various reference to Nokia phones probably didnt help). Even though the specific references arent current and some of the plot points wouldnt happen today thanks to youtube tutorial videos, the ideas about fashion, tech, and trends are still pretty relevant. Its also just fun to read, poo-sham will be hilarious forever as far as Im concerned.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A tale of teenage cool-hunters. The first disappointment in the Westerfeld ouvre--it's not bad, but it's not as fresh or inventive as his other stuff. As always, however, the characters are well developed, interesting people.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I didn't like this one as much as I would like. It just made me want to go and read M.T. Anderson's Feed again (which in my opinion can't be matched for a view of the greedy, corporate future). Not bad, but slight in comparison to other futuristic dystopias. I'd like to read the Uglies trilogy someday, since that's really what Westerfeld is known for.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I probably would have given this a higher rating had anyone else written it, but I know Westerfeld's work, and he's capable of much more than this. Finding out about cool hunting was very interesting, but the character falls flat, and I just never bought (pun intended) that the stakes were as high as the narration tried to make them seem.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    17-year old Hunter works as a trend scout, his friend Jennifer is a trend innovator. Searching for Mandy, their missing boss, they find a cache of counterfeit shoes, much better than the originals, both in design and in quality.The perfect shoes. These criminals are not just product counterfeiters, they are also tricksters bent on disrupting the market.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I seriously loved this book, it has all of my favorite things. There are girls on roller skates, tons of quirky information on a range of historical, scientific and social subjects and a great scene where the protagonist calls the New York Public Library to ask how to tie a bow tie.
    Hunter's job is to scope out whats cool, in the trend pyramid, he is a trendsetter, someone that follows an innovator. He meets Jen, an innovator who is willing to try anything. Hunter's boss goes missing and Jen decides they need to investigate. What they find is a hidden society looking to change the way trends hit society, way more then they bargained for.
    I love Hutner's voice it is totally believable and makes the story highly readable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Favorite Character?
    Jen, because she is an Innovator.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Scott Westerfeld is a master of smart, thought-provoking books. This one, about Hunter and Jen and their journey to the dark side of what makes something cool, is a great ride all the way.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Hunter is sort of a Cool Detector - that is, he looks for things that are novel and shoots them off to a certain major brand to see about incorporating it into future designs. The story opens with him meeting Jen, who has tied her shoelaces in a particularly unusual way. When Hunter's boss disappears, he and Jen find themselves chasing a group of sort-of anarchists. It's a somewhat interesting take on what makes something "cool" or popular, and why trends fade so quickly, but being someone so totally not fashion-conscious in any form, I couldn't always relate. I've never seen a pair of shoes, for example, that I just had to have. That's an utterly foreign idea to me. All the same, the story itself was kind of fun and Westerfeld always spins a decent yarn. I just wasn't the right audience.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I didn't really understand all of this book, probably because I read it in the span of an hour
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Really good until the ending, but an unsatisfactory ending makes the whole book seem worse. Jen was pretty cool until the ending, and I really liked Hunter until the ending too, but he lost some of my respect.Good read, but the ending could definitely be better.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is about a boy named Hunter. Hunter is a person who watches for trends and makes them famous. Hunter meets a girl named Jen who makes trends. But soon after he meets Jen, his boss suddenly disappears. On the search for Hunter's boss, they stumble across this party where Hunter finds out people are set out to kill him. Jen finds out where Hunter's boss is hidden and all the secret shoes that have been banned and Hunter's company has been trying to find. When Jen and Hunter rescue Hunter's boss, the shoes have been burned and Hunter knows there's nothing he could do. Hunter turns out to be fired and has no where to go.This book was pretty good. Although I wonder why Scott Westerfield decided to base the book around shoes. Scott Westerfield is an amazing author though and I like how is books are about something most people wouldn't think about. I like how he put Jen as the person who doesn't care about what people think and Hunter is the timid, shy person. This book is amazing and I wish more books could be writting like this.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What is cool? According to Hunter Braque, most people need to be told the answer to this question, and he's one of those who know: he's a 'cool hunter,' meaning he gets paid to inform his boss of the cool things he sees on the streets. When his boss goes missing, however, he must team up with an Innovator (one of those people who effortlessly is cool) to find her.This was pretty awesome - Hunter is an appealing character, up-front, easy-going and pretty knowledgeable about 'cool,' how 'cool' happens, and how 'cool' spreads. He's also very funny, and his observations (he's a paid observer, and it's what he does best) are pretty often spot-on. As his boss works for 'the client' (a shoe company that's VERY well known) and Hunter's shy of endorsements, he almost never names brands, instead talking around them, and it's a lot of fun to try and identify those brands.Hunter spends a lot of time talking about trends and trendsetters, and how companies have taken a major interest in trendsetters, in the hopes of starting and profiting off of trends themselves, and so the reader gets a lot of mini, yet completely fascinating history lessons on how things - fashion, trends, even viruses - spread. A lot of this book reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and I'm now rereading the Tipping Point so I can talk to my book group about it as well as this one. Again, Westerfeld writes a clever, fast-paced, fully fascinating book (I'm remembering his fully awesome Peeps as I write this).Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I had a difficult time getting into this book. It was a bit slow in the beginning, and I would have liked more mystery and less critical commentary on consumerism.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I would like the main character, Hunter as my friend because he is quite street smart. He knows alot about Streetfashion, where, how it comes from, and how it started. I think that being a coolhunter is quite intresting, and I would like to have a freind that is expirienced in it. I would like to learn more about industries, adverstisements, and how marketing schemes can affect consummers.This book apeals to me alot as it is quite modern, and fashion savy. The author writes in a way that is easy to understand, and keeps up with pop culture.I like the writting style of this author because I am able to learn unique things about shoes, pants, buttons ect.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A YA version/ripoff of Connie Willis' 'Bellwether' or William Gibson's 'Pattern Recognition'.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    What are you tuning into when you decide that something is cool? Do you have an inner compass for what’s cool? This is the mystery that wasn’t, like the fads the book describes, this book is pumped up with no lasting substance. Everything happens just a little too easily, and in the end the plot goes nowhere. Seventeen year old Hunter Braque gets paid to hunt for the next big thing. He is a “cool hunter”. Although I was fascinated by the fashion confidence exhibited by the characters in the book, I wondered all the way through whether it would be something I would recommend. On the pro side I’d recommend it to teenagers just for the insight into the genesis of fads such as baggy pants and over sized shoes, incorporated into the plot of the story: “The guy walking past was wearing a shirt five sizes too big (innovated by gangbangers to hide guns in their waistbands), shorts down below his knees (innovated by skaters to save their feet from injury)” (page 27). “One thing about being a cool hunter, you realize one simple fact: Everything has a beginning. Nothing always existed. Everything had an Innovator.” (page 61). On the negative side I might not recommend it just because on the whole, the mystery, and the chase through Manhattan part of the story is unrealistic. Although I realize that this book is in part a satire on fashion trends I would still like more substance in the plot, then again, maybe no substance is the point.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hunter is a cool hunter, someone who goes out into the world tracking and cataloging cool in all its forms and passing the world along to corporations and advertising agencies. When he meets a Jen, an Innovator (someone who invents the new coolest thing instead of following it as Trendsetters do), his well ordered life (in reality and idea) begins to get complicated. When a marketing manager from a big name client goes missing, Hunter and Jen discover the coolest shoes they've ever seen, an ad campaign for a company that may or may not exist, and a conspiracy that could mean the end of the cult of cool. While many of the characters can seem somewhat one note, Hunter and Jen are well realized. I understood their passion for cool, and their desire not just to solve the mystery of the missing marketing manager, but to find the cool and to hold on to it for all its worth. This was a fun, fun read, laced with pop culture references, filled with adventure and tons of humor.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a quick read. I enjoyed it because it was a non science fiction book written in a science fiction style. This is one of the things I enjoy about Westerfeld, he takes interesting pop-science style info and makes a great story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    After reading the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, I was excited to read something else he'd written. So Yesterday is about a Trendsetter named Hunter Braque. He lives his life finding the next big thing, the next thing that will make him "cool". He becomes friends with a Innovator named Jen and from then on they go on this wild ride to find Hunter's boss, whose gone missing and not get caught by the Anti-Client. All in all this was a thrill ride of a story. Like the Uglies series, So Yesterday was another fictional look into consumerism and trends. I love that Westerfeld's writing is geared towards someone with a mind and isn't just some brainless garbage. While being a great story, this book really makes you think about why you wear what you wear and why fashion is the way that it is. I definitely recommend this book to current fans of Scott Westerfeld and those reading his works for the first time who like to look outside the box.Originally Posted on YABooksCentral.com
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Read a LONG time ago, but just adding it now.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Started off so good and so fresh and so exciting and ended.... well, flat (you were afraid I was going to say so yesterday, weren't you?). And weird and so much less than it could have been. It's like it got caught up in itself and it's own coolness and forgot it's own message. Or maybe there wasn't a message. Or maybe the message was that the book couldn't even pull-off the message. The idea was good, great even but I don't know - I was just disappointed, that's all.