About book The Art Of Conversation: A Guided Tour Of A Neglected Pleasure (2008)
Globalization and our culture is forcing us to communicate in ways that involve less face-to-face conversations than ever. Consequently, the art of conversation is quickly disappearing. While many teens and young adults become proficient in texting, e-mail, and facebooking, we seem to be losing an art that was once vastly enjoyed. In this book, by Catherine Blyth, the author tries to give us tips to make us better conversationalists. While I did enjoy some points and chapters at the beginning of the book (ex: the importance of small-talk, listening, silence, etc) by the middle of the book I was ready to pretty much give up (when she starts talking about how to respond to insults, jabs, etc). At certain points it felt like she was just giving us lists and "rules" to follow, which seem completely unnatural to follow during the course of normal conversation. As the author notes many times, conversation is a lot more than simply conveying information. It is about exchanging emotion. And on that point, sadly, there is very little the author can offer to make us better emotionally aware and able to express ourselves fully and naturally. Things like confidence, charm, and the likes which are so crucial to being a person other people want to converse with cannot be given to us by the author. However, the book was still interesting and her style of writing did not slow me down or bother me one bit (as other reviewers have mentioned). Overall, I would not read it again but was interesting enough to keep me reading until the end. 3 stars. "Walk into any bar or internet cafe and you'd think conversation is going out of style"Regrettably, I judged the whole book by that only slightly funny one line, and bought the damn thing, and have regretted it ever since. It is an insipid, idiotic book built entirely on the premise that our wills have been bent to the evils of technology and that we have all but ripped off the arteries of the English language with all the "brb's" we send on text. It reads as something written by an egotistical 20-something who was fueled entirely by vapid compliments given to her by a bunch of dumb friends about how funny she was. Half the time it is a rant against technology. And very often there are neat little diagrams about what to avoid ("weather") and what not to avoid ("humour"). And overally, nothing in the book is remotely going to contribute to the art of conversation. Just. Whatever.
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Educational but hard to remember anything I read.
—Khai
