An energetic and optimistic game plan for achieving better socializing through better talk.
DeNucci presents a book of stories and strategies designed to improve conversations.
The author, a conference speaker, is quick to assure her readers that her new guide is “NOT a book that will try to transform you into a flitty social butterfly or a dashing bon vivant who strives to be the life of the party.” In these pages, she advocates for employing an array of approaches to improve real, meaningful conversations of the type that can “help us uncover common (or contrasting) backgrounds, interests, experiences, beliefs, and connections.” Each chapter of her book includes many stories drawn from the experiences of her friends in various social and personal encounters and ends with discussion questions (“How does it feel for you to rehash fond memories and mutual experiences with colleagues, classmates, friends, or family members?”), leaving space for readers to write their answers. DeNucci explains that, while improved conversations can obviously benefit family and work situations, research has also tied better socializing to higher levels of physical health. This makes it all the more concerning that, according to a United States Bureau of Labor Statistics survey, the average person spends less than an hour socializing in an average day. The author discusses several of the most obvious culprits for this dire situation, from chronic overwork to rampant distraction fueled by the Internet and social media. As one of her inset quips puts it, “The best conversations are interesting and uninterrupted. Too bad most of us haven't had one of those since 1997.”
Throughout, even as she describes societal obstacles that seem insurmountable (most especially the ubiquitous practice dubbed “phubbing”: “ignoring one’s companion or companions in order to pay attention to one’s phone or electronic device”), DeNucci maintains a cheerful, upbeat tone. She is always open-minded and candid when she confesses that she shares some of the faults she describes—there are no attempts to lecture or criticize. Instead, she adopts a tone of “we’re-all-in-this-together” amusement over the state of modern communication. “Think of all the things people feel compelled to do and say online that they’d never do or say in person!” she writes; “Kind of mind-boggling.” This has the cumulative effect of making her authorial voice feel like that of an older sibling or sympathetic coach. This quality is particularly convincing in the book’s section focusing on being a good listener, which the author puts forth as a key to making good conversation. She effectively describes the benefits of listening in a monologue-obsessed online culture and gives readers tips on strengthening this often-overlooked skill. Readers who’ve been increasingly frustrated either by society’s degraded conversational priorities or their own discomfort with meaningful socializing will find DeNucci an enthusiastically supportive presence on the page, assuring readers that they are not alone and that improvement is possible. The author’s combination of good cheer and straight talk (“if you insist on being the smartest person in the room,” she writes, “you just might end up being the only person in the room”) will make this book invaluable to conversationalists at all levels of expertise.
An energetic and optimistic game plan for achieving better socializing through better talk.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2023
ISBN: 9780983546153
Page Count: 486
Publisher: Rosewall Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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