The Serious Business of Small Talk: Becoming Fluent, Comfortable, and Charming Paperback – March 20, 2018

Reading this book is very like sitting down to lunch with Carol and having an interesting conversation. Even if you weren’t listening to what she was saying, you would be interested in observing the way she presented it. You would be interested in both the content and the form, because she brings both together with considerable art and science.There are a lot of good stories in this book, of people communicating, well, and not so well, and most of them will be stories you will recognize.The book, judged by it’s cover, looks like a self-help book, but that’s just the surface. Carol will teach you what small-talk is, and why it is important, but the book goes way beyond that, becoming no less than a philosophical meditation on human nature. If that sounds dry and dusty, well, it’s far more juicy than that, a lot more fun, and I found it a very quick read.This book is a gateway drug for an addiction to humanity.If you come to it as a skeptic, like me, you will probably get more engaged than you expected. Carol speaks directly to the skeptic community on page 1, and I think what she is telling us is that you may well start the day with a tweet, but you shouldn’t stay a bird all day.Carol presents small-talk as the entry point for more interesting conversations. It’s the somewhere you have to start from to go nearly anywhere. It is presented as a learnable skill, perhaps even something a philosopher can acquire. Without it, very many doors are simply closed. It is not about small talk as an end in itself, but rather as a technique which provides entree into deeper conversations and better human relations, and thus a book on how we can all live together with a better understanding and appreciation of our fellow human beings.This is a book written by a doer, a practitioner, an active, practicing, working coach who is teaching real people to do real things. It is not intended as a book of theory or meditation, that’s just icing on the cake. She will tell you why to do something, the thinking behind it, but she’s more concerned with the game and playing it effectively. Even if you know how to do it, she has a lot to share here to help you do it even better, and have fun doing it.Full disclosure, I have known and admired Carol for years, we are both long-time fellow members of the First Unitarian-Universalist Society of San Francisco.

Carol Fleming's approach of using small talk as a way of breaking the ice and getting to know each other is smart and deceptively simple. She asks us to push ourselves to live more interesting lives and develop a cash of stories and anecdotes that can pepper any convo like a trail of breadcrumbs leading to our inner treasures!

What a fun reading about a subject so important in these days! It is straight forward and helpful. Carol's style of writing is direct, clear and so lively as if she is standing right in front of me talking to me personally. I love the book!

There are other books on small talk but this one is particularly worthy of attention on two grounds. First, it's particularly explicit about dos and don'ts, with crystalline examples. And those tips are aimed at average people--you won't be intimidated. The book's second core differentiator is it's focus on the quality of your voice which, alas, can make as much difference as what you say. The book offers simple tips for improvement, even for how to speak more successfully with someone who's hard of hearing. And the book is published by Berrett-Koehler, well-known for curating books that are beneficial not just to individuals but for making a broader difference. I'm not surprised that BK published this one.

Tips that I learned from this book have been helpful in several settings, especially when meeting new people. I have gained skills that help me relax and make "small talk" an asset and even a pleasurable experience.

While the author does give some good tips, it seems like the focus of this book was more on the psychology and philosophy of small talk. Not so much the practical how-to guide that I was looking for.