Library Submission #2 - How to Have a Conversation and Make Friends
Book Review - How to Have a Conversation and Make Friends by Don Gabor
Best Read: When you feel your social anxiety has made you forget how to socialize.
Even before working remotely, I had some difficulty talking to people. I was always the socially awkward kid in school and some ques didn’t really land well with me. My family was also socially isolated. Our only form of social interaction being with each other or the people who would come to my dad’s shop until he perceived some sort of unforgivable slight (even if one didn’t exist) and run them off. All of this to say, I wasn’t necessarily raised with the knowledge of how conversation actually works much less how to hold one properly.
Then the pandemic started, and a couple years later I started working remotely. Both seemed to fan the flame that is the isolation habit ingrained from my family, and I feel that my social skills that were hard won growing up have somewhat regressed. Pile this on top of how social interactions have been heavily impacted as a society due to a combination of the pandemic, hostile political alignments that border cult behavior, and generational divide; and you have the makings of a Jess who not only has a hard time feeling confident enough to start and hold a conversation, but also a slight fear that the conversation can quickly devolve into hostility.
Bookish Thoughts:
I like that this book starts off with understanding body language, both in what your body language can tell others, and what other’s body language should tell you. It goes into the importance that you body language is what tells others if you are open to interaction and for the most part my natural body language somewhat reflects my isolation habits.
Though it is only the first chapter reading this section did make me think about how with how social approaches have somewhat changed since the pandemic particularly around body language, but that the ability or really even the actual patience to interpret body language has steadily declined. Which leads to so many negative scenarios. Many of our emotions are expressed through it, far beyond RBF, and provides that extra level of context and nuance needed to initiate and maintain meaningful social interaction. But often we see online the dismissal of what can be seen as apparent in body language. Whether its catcalling a woman who is obviously just trying to mentally prepare for work during her commute, or the “prank” videos that plagued the YouTube sphere for so long. However there is also an exponential amount of layers of nuance on top of that, that would take way too long to go into here.
The other section that I took the most out of is how to end conversations tactfully in Part 3 (in my edition). This is mostly because I have a tendency to end conversations abruptly or awkwardly. It does go into different ways you can signal that you want to move towards ending the conversation and how to move out of conversations that are difficult to be in without outright ending the conversation rudely (no matter how tempted you are to tell them to just go away).
Overall I think that this book is a good addition to the Glow Up 101 shelf of the Glow Up Library, though it would be best to have the most update edition to read through.
I’ve got an older edition (early 2000’s so it’s a bit out of date with the tech side) but you can find the updated edition on Amazon here (not an affiliate link, not doing that yet) or you can check out your local library or the Libby App!