As I’m writing this, I’m on my way to Helsinki, Finland. Just before I entered the plane I went by the bookstore to buy a few of those books that are on the airport top-ten. You know, the usual Nikki French or Grisham. I also have The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. I like the works of this Japanese author, but sometimes, I want to have something more real to read. So that why I took The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (I heard about this book from a friend of mine, so figured it would probably be good) and The Fine Art of Small Talk by Debra Fine.

Now that last book it a true entertaining book. Not in the sense that it is a huge source of information for those who not that savvy at small talk (I’m not the worst at social gathering, although I think I still have a bit to learn there ), but more in the sense that it’s all small talk itself and that’s pretty hilarious.

It all starts with the line spacing and the margins. I think if the publishers would have decided to use normal setting practices, the amount of pages would have been half of what it is right now, or even less than that (it’s approximately 200 pages). Next, there are a lot of things being repeated in the book (and I’m only at page 60 right now).

All-in-all it’s a pretty entertaining book, but mind you, not only because of what I mentioned above. This book does offer a decent amount of information about how to get (and keep) a conversation going.

So, next time you run into me: I’m likely to use the occasional icebreaker such as ‘I know exactly zero people, how about you?’. So beware!