How is this book?

>>8766151
>How to make people smirk when they glance at your bookshelf

>>8766151
It's been collecting dust on my shelf for four months. I read the first quarter of it and the content was really useful and made a lot of sense but then I got bored.

>>8766151
Not too bad

Very anecdotal. Interesting enough, but there's a lot of filler.

The entire gist of the book is "express interest in other people and they'll like you for it."

>>8766157
>How to make people smirk when they glance at your bookshelf

fpbp

just looks like generic self help garbo desu

>>8766221
But its the original self help garbo.

>>8766221
Its the OG self help and it actually works

Niggers

Gaddis was right about it desu

>>8766368
What did he say?

>>8766372
He mocked it in The Recognitions by having characters portrayed as inauthentic who use it to convince themselves they were genius businessmen/negotiators/manipulators/etc. when really it made them come off like used car salesmen who could only use it effectively on people even dumber than themselves. Similar to the way he mocked psychoanalysis, where characters would think they could use it to solve all their problems.
It was immensely popular back when Gaddis was writing and he despised it. A lot of The Recognitions is about what makes people authentic, and he saw the idea of studying how to manipulate conversations as anathema to authenticity.

i read it, it's bad

just b urself

File: nice.jpg (181KB, 900x675px) Image search: [Google]

181KB, 900x675px

>>8766157
fpbp

Hhj

>>8766151
Good if you are a salesman.
Good if you want to make shitty friends.
Good as a starting point if you are lacking virtually all social skills.

Bad in other cases.

Reading it won't hurt you tho, I'm obviously writing about following what he writes there.

>>8766151
Be interested in people, use their names when you speak to them more than you normally would. Thats literally it.

Well intentioned but I feel like it's a handbook for potential sociopaths to pretend to be a good person.

>>8766151
Have some good strategies, but you'll neve put it into practice because you're a sperg

>>8766151
>not trying to just bee yourself

Faking your own persona is not the way to go, pal.

If you wanna be a sociopath then its great

>>8766151
Its bassically:
>Don't be an asshole
>talk about someone other than yourself once in a while

>>8766151
It's a nice guide on how to manipulate people of lesser intelligence. Most of the anecdotes in the book involve the main character taking advantage of other people's sense of vanity.

Does what it says on the tin.

Every criticism I've seen of it is along the lines of "being yourself is more important than trying to manipulate people into liking you" which is a fine thing to believe, but the book is called "How to Win Friends & Influence People" not "How to Be Yourself Regardless of Whether That Wins You Friends"