How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships [Paperback]

The positive aspects:
- Concise, good to read in various small instalments and take time to reflect on the different techniques, appreciate them, and even make some real-life experiments in-between reading sessions. Easily discard the ones that don't make sense to your particular way of life.

- Contains some really good new ideas and excellent techniques that you can use to effectively communicate with people in various situations, things to keep in mind, blunders to avoid and good postures to adopt. One should not undermine the potential life-enhancing benefits of reading the few truly excellent gems.

- Several of these guidelines appear to be simple common sense if you have any perceptive amount of social experience, but it's appreciated to be reminded about these things by an external source to better grasp their implications.

- Some amusing anecdotes will make you laugh, such as the businesswoman's encounter with a group of potential Japanese partners.

The negative aspects:
- Early on, the tone gave me the impression of a much older, chiefly superficial woman, who does not fundamentally encourage having any sense of humour. She is also remarkably unforgiving in her judgement and did not appear sympathetic to me at all in the way she constantly refers to people as "big winners" and "little losers". That sentiment eventually diminished with time, though I could not help but still feel the writer did not specifically address people of my generation with the unimaginative humour and old-fashioned rationale. All of this is possibly better suited at people 40 and up, mostly businesspeople, which is a big letdown from my point of view.

- Suffers from a very average level of language for the most part, such as repeated attempts to break words down in syl-la-bles as an awkward and decidedly superfluous way to emphasise. Also plagued with too many expressions targeted at the lowest common denominator, particularly in the way she makes her "characters" talk.

- There is no scientific evidence to support most of the claims; it is all purely based on the author's personal experiences or deductions. Some statistics are unaccounted for, such as when she says you only need 50 new words in your vocabulary to make a remarkable difference, or that you get 80% of the right lingo and insider questions from just one exposure to any given field. Leil Lowndes even goes on to explain how Eve commanded Adam to eat the infamous apple with the power of language, which I found absurd.

- Most tips are given far too brief coverage and when it gets really interesting you are whisked away onto other subjects. I would have appreciated a lengthier study or more in-depth analysis of the human behaviours at work in these examples.

- A lot of it just didn't make sense to me, such as the notion that knowing a little bit of nothing about everything will get you anywhere (I believe people of any specific expertise will still be able to spot the uninitiated even if you know a handful of keywords pertaining to their precise industry or competence, which won't get you much further).

Overall, this book didn't impress me at all.