The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine, 0749926740, Lowest Book Price Finder

Customer Reviews:

very good book

this book is a realistic and practical guide to the art of starting and maintaining a conversation.
having read a lot of similar books, i can say that this one is the best

As a previous review also explains, I must say how disappointed I was with this book.
If you want to talk like a cheesy American, 'go right ahead friend'.
It also encourages you to talk about 'taboo topics' such as politics, which is generally forbidden in 'SMALL TALK'.
I also add that it is very business orientated and has little use in general social life.
Very disappointing.

Buy for comedy value!

This book has a small amount of useful information but a majority of the writing will be common-sense to most. Icebreakers such as "Describe your ideal weather and why?" and "tell me about a time you had too much to eat" appear in the second chapter (seriously!)and after that it is rather hard to take the writer seriously. Anyone following the advice in these early chapters would find their social lives deteriorating at a tremendous rate.

A bit disappointing on the whole....

I bought this book with high expectations. What I found was a relatively thin set of (americanised) tips on how to get into a conversation. The book had many opinions and pointers, but none are backed up with any fact of why it would be a good approach, no more than the authors opinion that it is a good approach anyways.

Also be warned that this book is fairly business orientated, so while it will cater for people seeking help in business events and the work arena, people seeking other socialising skills may do better elsewhere.

A bit of an example at why I was disappointed : there is a section of how to start a conversation with a stranger, using ice breakers. What followed was a list of 50 ice breakers, but I don't think I would use *any* of them. The ice breakers were things like, "Tell me about you childhood memories". Now, maybe I'm shy, but if I said this to a stranger I would expect a very strange look. The other 49 lines were of similar tone. Not good.

On the whole, the book does offer some advice, but it is nothing more advanced than simple tips that we all know ('Maintain eye contact, etc'). It doesn't really help you any further in the way that some other confidence building books do.

limited

the book does not contain anything outside of common sense, but then theres an argument that smalltalk is probably common sense.

some useful insights into an ex-engineers view of the world, but all in all i was disapointed by the lack of substance in the book, some of the recomended conversational questions seemed to be a little childish and lack imagination or experience.

too limited.

View more reviews or product details from Amazon.co.uk