My wife sent me a picture of a stack of books from a post that called them “20 Books To Read In Your 20s”.

(the picture, for those reading this in the mobile app)

I’d read three already (and can only really recommend one of those, McRaven’s Make Your Bed), so I decided to see if there was any merit to the rest of the stack.

This one is a yes, with caveats. I'd read the authors' The Decision Book and The Question Book and was quite disappointed with both. Still, open mind and all, I gave this a shot. Twenty-something me might have liked this more. Current-something me (forty years later) would tell twenty-something me to read with a critical eye (but I probably wouldn't have listened.)

Unlike the other two, this one does have some value. This might be the best takeaway:
“But before writing (or speaking), you should ask yourself these questions: What do I really want to say and can I say it more succinctly?”

And this is good: “And in 1984 the communication researcher Walter Fisher came up with a radical thesis: people do not want logical arguments; they want good stories. ”

But... “Negotiating properly means that everyone gets more than they originally hoped for”
No. In a succesful negotiation, both parties are satisfied, which may be less than what they hoped for but still acceptable. (Compromise, on the other hand, leaves both parties unhappy.)

The authors again use some quotes of questonable origin. “Most theories in this book argue that good communication has to do with cooperation. But in reality it’s sometimes a different story. It is no coincidence that the book The 48 Laws of Power , a compilation of classic power strategies by the American author Robert Greene, was a bestseller.” That's not a good book at all ... a bunch of unsourced anecdotes (a BUNCH of anecdotes...multiple per "law") draped in the author's interpretations of applicability. And this came from that:
“Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again, so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener.’ - Leonardo da Vinci”

Weird. The only source I could find is Greene’s book. And,
“In the twentieth century 'I think, therefore I am' no longer applies, but rather 'Others are thinking of me, therefore I am.' - Peter Sloterdijk”
I couldn't find a source for that one.

A few more highlights:

“Celeste Headlee put it brilliantly in a TEDx speech: ‘If they’re talking about having lost a family member, don’t start talking about the time you lost a family member. If they’re talking about the trouble they’re having at work, don’t tell them about how much you hate your job. It’s not the same. It’s never the same. All experiences are individual. And, more importantly, it’s not about you.”
Take heed

“Don’t ask: ‘What do you do for a living?” Ask instead “What’s keeping you busy these days?”
Second time this has popped up this week. Good stuff.

“Red lie – no one benefits: this is the lowest form of lying. Saying something with complete awareness that the other person knows the statement to be false, even if you sometimes end up also inflicting damage on yourself: ‘The largest audience ever to witness an inauguration.”
Hah!

“Who would you prefer to be?’, ‘How would you like to die?’ and ‘Which characteristics do you most appreciate in a man?
1. They are open questions that you cannot answer with yes or no.
2. The questions require no prior knowledge; in other words, there are no right or wrong answers, only honest ones.
3. They are questions that centre on your counterpart rather than on you.”

“The psychiatrist Eric Berne (1910–70), however, believed that you do not have to go on a painful journey into your past to get to know yourself; it is enough to observe yourself in communication with others.”
Do I need to read Berne? I did read some a long time ago (Games People Play).

“The term l’esprit de l’escalier (“staircase wit”) refers to opinions and ideas that we express with clear, polished pithiness – and which always occur to us too late. ”

Section title: “WORDS AND MEANINGS”
Words matter

“Good reasoning aims to convince, but it also lets itself be convinced. Simply put, it is the search for truth.· Bad reasoning has no interest in the truth; it is simply about wanting to be right.” ( )

Concise and cool information summed up in each section and at the end of each section. Ideal. ( )

Best for:
Perhaps people who need to negotiate? Or maybe people who just want a quick reference of different ideas or theories on communication? I’m not totally sure.

In a nutshell:
An attempt at narrowing down — into two pages and a diagram — theories of communication.

Worth quoting:
“Negotiating properly means everyone gets more than they expected to.”

Why I chose it:
I was about a week away from starting up an office job for the first time in nearly a year, and figured I could use a refresher on communicating with people who aren’t my partner or friends.

Review:
I’m not sure what this book is. It’s not a book that you read cover to cover (well, I did, but I didn’t need to). It is more of a reference book. And while the ideas the authors explore are loosely collected into communication realms (Job and Career, Self and Knowledge, Love and Friendship, Words and Meanings), I didn’t notice much of a difference between certain ideas that warranted them being siloed into such categories. But I appreciate the attempt at good organization.

I think this book would work much better in a larger format, where one page is the diagram of the idea (and the diagrams are cute and somewhat helpful), and one page is the overview / explanation. There isn’t a lot of content here — each section is a very high-level overview — so my suggestion would result in a much thinner book, but I think that book would be better for it. The diagrams all take up two pages, which means there’s the spine smack in the middle. It’s hard to read.

The fact that I don’t recall much of what I read, and that my focus is on organization and formatting should be a hint as to why I’m not a big fan of this book. I appreciate the concept and even some of the content, but the execution just didn’t work for me.

Keep it / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep it, because it might be a good reference point. ( )