The Art of Conversation: A Guided Tour of a Neglected Pleasure Paperback – December 29, 2009

A thoroughly enjoyable read. The book makes an excellent case for learning to enjoy the pleasure of conversation in a modern world. The author displays a sharp wit and adroitly weaves in an eclectic array of examples to gently chide, educate, and deliver practical advice.As you read you find yourself being drawn in and agreeing with the author, which perhaps is a testament to the same skills being taught in the book itself. She is clearly a erudite woman and has packed a lot of good information in a small space. You'll learn a lot about conversation and get quite of few laughs too. It is definitely a book I will reread in the future and highly recommend to friends.

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If you're looking (as I was) for a book to help you become better at conversation, keep looking. This book does not do that. As the subtitle says, it's more of a guided tour in which the tour guide has collected (and is keen to point out to you) every piece of printed word throughout recorded history that's even tangentially related to Conversation.Quotations are absolutely abused throughout the book, to the point where it's very difficult and frustrating to read because Blythe's thoughts, information, or instruction are never really sustained without recalling at least two or three historical figures and getting their thoughts on the subject. And at least one of those will be so obscure and poorly introduced as to negate any import their words may have had.Blythe does analyze different aspects of conversation as well as offer some vague tips, but rather than really dive into these things, she mentions them more in passing. They seem more like the thread that ties together all the quotations rather than the other way around.I'm at chapter six (or page 115 in the hardback), and I'm not sure I'm willing to hear her out for another 170 pages. I've not read anything so far that indicates the rest would be anything other than quotes cobbled together with ornate, cutesy prose that's quite inappropriate given the topic at hand.Thank god I got this remaindered. Even if it were free, I'd recommend friends not waste their time on it. It's just too shallow to provide practical help and too choppy to be an enjoyable read.

This work is a brilliant magazine article inflated into a mediocre book. The brilliant part ends with page 26. That page, titled "The Concise Manifesto," is a summary of what conversation ought to be, and it may be worth the price of the entire book. From there on, "The Art of Conversation" uses too many devices familiar to writers with deadlines to meet and spaces to fill: short paragraphs, abundant quotations from others, recurring categories and subcategories with slangy names, lists where ordinary paragraphs would do, and subheadings every few paragraphs. In other words, typography and repetition in place of thought.Two other observations: The author, Catherine Blyth, is as beautiful as a fashion model, judging by the photograph on the dust jacket, and perhaps for her the art of conversation is not as fraught as it is for the rest of us. Also, she is English and occasionally uses phrases that must be clear on her side of the Atlantic but that puzzle me.

The book makes the reader aware of mistakes he may not know he's making. It made me wonder if I'm listening when someone's speaking and if someone is listening when I'm speaking. It gave me ideas of how to react to comments I may not like or agree with, and most of all, it delighted me to read her humorous and ironic observations of conversations.

Lol I have no clue how this book made its way to 2 1/2 stars. This is one of my most pivotal reads in the last 10 years, easily (along with Ethics, the bio of Albert Einstein, Shoe Dog, and a few others). Conversation is simply “do-able,” now. The one takeaway lesson of the entire book is worth the price, alone: “The point of conversation is to be enjoyable.” If you can truly understand and internalize this statement, your social interactions will be transformed. Two and a half stars is a complete injustice for this stellar title.