The Intelligent Conversationalist

May 1, 2016

For many, presenting in public is an awesome challenge. In Do You Talk Funny?, Nihill (founder of FunnyBizz) describes how stand-up comedy can be applied to speaking engagements to make people sound funnier and appear better-looking. Similarly beneficial is The Intelligent Conversationalist from Webber (The Single Girl's Survival Guide), which delivers a summary of world culture and events to enable readers to engage in small talk in academic circles. Nihill's book suggests warming up by practicing in front of cats or dogs, then talking to individuals before the presentation, and encourages inviting the audience to the story. Webber's solution is in the form of a "cheat sheet," which, as it turns out, is a solid overview of math, religion, history, geography, and culture--a one-step guide to a liberal education. VERDICT Both volumes will be valuable to patrons, depending on their needs, as each serves as a sort of guide to successful public speaking as well as understanding the societies that have contributed to our contemporary mind-sets.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2016
Small talkwe all hate it, yet we all have to do it at some point or another. You're at a party where you don't know anyone but don't want to be a wallflower. Perhaps you're on a coffee break at work, and everyone seems to know something about a topic you might have read about on Facebook, but . . . . This unique book offers a wide variety of facts that an average person can talk about with just about anyone. The content is divided into broad sections (such as Math and Economics, Religion, and Culture ), with a brief informative overview, then three to five cheat sheets that explore everything from grammar to the credit crunch. Each of the 31 cheat sheets ends with a Social Survival Strategy, offering an argument one can inject to spur further conversation, a crisp fact to be used to sound brilliant, and a pivot point that can steer the group in another direction (try Shall we make use of the Twenty-first Amendment and have another drink? to get out of a thorny discussion of the Constitution, for example). Great fun and really smart. Readers who didn't even know they needed a book like this will find much to enjoy here.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)