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★★★★★
Fascinating, enjoyable to read. Beautifully written.
“Much like poetry, it is enjoyable to read and insightful, deep thinking. I would call it art and a fascinating outlook on language.”
Catherine R.
Tongue: A Cognitive Hazard
Touch it and you're part of the experiment.
Finish it and you'll never think in words the same way again.
Hughes spent a career decoding the human mind — building systems that could read, influence, and rewire anyone who came near them. Then he turned the weapon inward. TONGUE is the fallout: an experiment disguised as a paperback, a linguistic device engineered to short-circuit your dependence on language itself.
Each page corrupts the circuitry of meaning, twisting familiar thoughts until they look back at you with new eyes. The text replicates. It feeds on your attention and leaves the clean bones of awareness where comprehension used to be. Surgery without anesthesia — no healing, just revelation.
Three voices run it. None of them behave.
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The Manual. Dead-eyed instructions. Redacted research. Sentences that came out of a filing cabinet that should not exist. You follow them anyway. Everyone does.
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The Fever Dream. Then the language starts sweating and the whole thing splits open — honest in the only way honesty ever arrives. Crooked, barefoot, more alive than you were ready for.
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The Fracture. A quiet third voice underneath both, leaning in from behind the sentence. Most readers meet it around the page where they stop reading and start being read.
He built a mind-virus to hijack you out of an infection you never knew you had. If you're still reading, the download has already begun.
⚠ It's not dangerous. Not really. Unless you finish it.
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"Without a doubt, the strangest book I've ever read and yet it is some sort of exquisite genius. I don't know why I loved it but I loved it. You just have to experience it."
✔ Tom C. ★★★★★
"Bloody hell this book did my head in. It's marvellous and fascinating."
✔ James L. ★★★★★
"This is a book I needed but wish I didn't read."
✔ Emma T. ★★★★★
The Three Voices
The book keeps changing who is talking. One stretch reads like a government manual, all instructions and redacted research. Then it breaks open into something feverish where the sentences stagger. Underneath both there is a third voice that never announces itself and waits for you to slow down. The switching is the structure, not a mistake.
Language As A Parasite
Run language through the criteria and it fits. It occupies a host without the host knowing. It transmits itself to other people. It modifies itself over time. Hughes is not saying language is evil, only that it got in front of experience somewhere along the way and never moved. That is the premise the whole book runs on.
Why The Pages Look Wrong
The text is not set the way a book is normally set. It breaks the rules of the page deliberately, because the layout is doing part of the work. If you flick through it in a shop you will think something has gone wrong at the printer. Nothing has.
Read It In Order
This is the one instruction that matters. The book works line by line and each step depends on the one before it, so dipping in at random gets you nothing. Start at the front and go forward. It is the opposite of every other book on this shelf.
Who Wrote It
Chase Hughes spent his career on behaviour and influence, and wrote The Ellipsis Manual and Six-Minute X-Ray. This is the one where he turns that apparatus on language itself. He says parts of it scared him while he was writing them, and that some of it did not feel like his.
Format & Shipping
Paperback, 174 pages, published November 2025. Dispatched within 1 to 2 business days with tracking emailed as soon as it ships. Free shipping on all orders.
Return Policy
30 days from delivery. If it isn’t what you were after, contact us for a full refund.
See What Makes This Book Unusual
I rarely had true silence experience and this book offered me one of them.
It is more an experience than a book. Some parts are easy some other more difficult for a non english native. But but at the end of the book my mind litterally stopped chattering and commenting. It was an intersesting state, but the thinking back the next day after sleeping. I will retry another reading and see whats next.
I see more clearer how words are connected and got lot of ideas about that experience.
This subject hit home for me!
This book is with me constantly. I read when time permits. Quite interesting 🤔. I suggest it to most readers especially the young generations.
Tongue - a realistic look at your inner reality
My book 'Tongue' came in the usual cardboard packaging that puts Amazon ahead of other couriers out there.
The book was in pristine condition without any unwanted folds or door ears.
My delivery was through my letterbox ahead of Amazon's predicted time, tantamount to Amazon's ambitious outlook towards their loyal customer base, and an acknowledgement of thier superiority in logistical planning, this delivery arrived at the height of the December Christmas rush.
'Tongue, A Cognitive Hazzard', by Chase Hughes give the reader an insight into words and language and their impact on our inner voice, and that voices impact on our reality.
Great book, great read, great service.
Breaking the script
Guidance , breaking free of the mental cage and getting to understand what "the script "is and how to rewrite it , chase Hughes I'm so grateful that you have released this book I'm still figuring some parts out but getting slowly to the just of it .
Really pleased .
ANOTHER powerful tool
This book will not be for everyone, and it's not designed to be either. For me as a student of the language we use and having an awareness of how we talk to ourselves and each other, I found this book enlightening and a GREAT read! Because of the format of it, it won't be everyone's cup of tea.
Mind Cracking
This book is like water poured into the tiny cracks in my mind - it has a visceral effect of instantly seeing how the words used to point to objects (to separate the one into many) are not in any way a representation or substitute for the reality; the words hover, suspended in space as if sitting in a side-cart rather than being scattered over the windshield of perception. This book is one glimpse into that nakedness, and sits alongside what many great wonderers have existed in and pointed to with language for eons up until now. This is why they call a spoken truth a 'pointer' - because this is what all words/symbols can ever truly be. A great read for those who may not be inclined to reach for the typical 'spiritual' section of the book shelf.
No.1 Book to read on the verge of 2026 | It is LIFE
I looked through the first 15 pages, but I was already tearing up seeing page 10. Thta made me quickly realize and feel what this book does. I will forever hold this book by my side, cherish it always, and read it many times in the years and decades to come. Because I will need it.
Chase, I can't express just how much you help humanity right now. Not that you don't know.
If anyone is reading these lines.. Read this book as soon as you can. In my opinion it will save LIFE itself.
Chase! You have some brains and balls to do something like this and call it a book.
I will follow your footsteps. 🙏🙂 You just broke reality. I have incredible amounts of gratitude for you. Thank you.
It is a must own book imho
One of the most genius books I have read in a very long time. Made the mistake of lending it out so I have to buy another. Soon. A must read, a must actual read because there is no way an audio would do it justice. The way it is written, even the font and the lay out of the book was def well thought out. Charge Hughes is def making waves.
The Book With Multiple Personalities
Three voices run this book. None of them behave.
The Manual
Some parts of this book talk at you like a washed-out government operative who lost his pension and wants to drag you down with him. Dead eyes. A voice that smells like stale coffee and old typewriter ribbons, insisting you follow instructions.
Nobody escapes the fine print. Every sentence looks like it was pulled from a filing cabinet that shouldn't exist.
You read it anyway — because part of you wants to know what happens when you obey a book that clearly doesn't trust itself.
The Fever Dream
Then the whole thing breaks open. The language starts sweating, the sentences stumble around barefoot, and suddenly you're babysitting a book with a 104 temperature and a grudge.
It's breathing. The text is trying to unionize. It's here to be honest in the only way honesty ever shows up: crooked, shivering, and more alive than you expected.
The Fracture
And somewhere in the middle of this circus, another voice shows up. The real quiet one. The one no one will admit is in the room.
It doesn't introduce itself. Doesn't need to. It just waits for you to slow down long enough to feel it leaning in from behind the sentence. A hitchhiker — patient, old, and slightly amused that you think you're the one reading.
You're not. Not entirely.
You'll Spot The Ones Who Didn't Read It
Hughes wrote TONGUE because something in language broke loose and he needed to see what it would do on the page.
Some parts genuinely scared him while he was writing them.
Some parts didn't feel like his at all.
If you read it and feel something shift under your ribs, don't fight it.
It's not the book.
It's the part of you that remembers what life felt like before you narrated everything to death.
You don't need the mask right now. Take it off. I'm right here with you.
Hughes
Everyone has an opinion. Almost nobody is indifferent.
Some readers call it exquisite. Some say it did their head in. One called it a book she needed but wishes she had not read. What almost nobody says is that it was fine, or that they forgot about it.
87%
said it was unlike any book they had read before, positive or negative
7 in 10
went back and reread pages they had already finished
44%
could not explain the book to someone else after finishing it
Based on 1000+ Customers, June 2026
How This Compares
Tongue
Every Other Book
Leaves you genuinely unsettled
Makes you stop mid-page and stare at nothing
You will still be thinking about it at 3am
Unlike anything on your shelf
You will want to hand it to someone immediately
Safe, familiar, forgettable
Our 30-Day Promise
Every order comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Open it, read the first twenty pages, and see whether it does what it says. If it is not for you, contact us for a full refund. No questions asked.
Hear From Readers
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★★★★★
A very interesting topic
“It’s not an easy read but as a big fan of Chase Hughes, I ordered it. It is a very interesting concept and it does make sense what he is proposes. I gets you to think about a thing, rather than just the name of the thing.”
John T.
”
★★★★★
Interesting, thought provoking 😊
“For those who aren’t interested or are fully caught up in habitual patterns, the book likely won’t “land” the same way. It provides an opportunity for self-observation and curiosity about one’s own thought processes. If you’re expecting effortless transformation, don’t. My experience is it’s more of a calibration: if your mind is already unconsciously aware, the exercises and disruptions in the book can amplify that awareness. If not, you might just see it as confusing or even meaningless. If anything, this book offers an invitation to notice, experience, and question the limits of conditioned thought. Your thoughts create reality. Understanding this is life changing.”
Magnus S.Frequently Asked Questions
?What is actually in this book?
Three voices, switching without warning. One reads like a government manual — instructions, redacted research, fine print you find yourself obeying. Then it breaks open into something feverish where the sentences stagger around. Underneath both is a third voice that never introduces itself and waits for you to slow down. The switching is the structure.
?Why does the text look wrong on the page?
Because the layout is doing part of the work. Lines sit where you do not expect them and the page refuses the shape you have read a thousand times. Most people assume a printing error for a few seconds before they understand. Nothing is wrong with your copy.
?Can I dip in and out of it?
No, and this is the one instruction that matters. It works line by line in sequence, each step depending on the one before it. Open it at random and you get a pile of strange sentences. Start at the front and read forward. It is the opposite of every other book on this site.
?Do I need to have read The Ellipsis Manual first?
No. Hughes is known for behaviour manuals like The Ellipsis Manual and Six-Minute X-Ray, and this is nothing like either of them. It shares no framework and assumes nothing. People who arrive expecting another system spend the first thirty pages waiting for one that never arrives.
?Is it going to be too clever for me?
There is no jargon and no academic apparatus. The difficulty is not that it is complicated, it is that it declines to explain itself. Some readers find that exhilarating and some find it deliberately obscure. Almost nobody lands in the middle, which is worth knowing before you buy.
?What if I hate it?
Send it back. 30 days from delivery, no reason needed. This book divides people more than anything else we stock, so the guarantee is unconditional rather than something you have to argue for.
?Shipping and returns?
Paperback, 174 pages. Orders are dispatched within 1 to 2 business days with tracking emailed as soon as they ship. Free shipping on all orders. You have 30 days from delivery, and if it is not what you were after, contact us for a full refund.