蔡康永的說話之道

This book was recommended to me by two of my close girl friends, Fishe and Cat. I'm mentioning them here, since they will appear more often than not in this blog. And NO those are not their real names. Both of them are frequent watchers of the author's show, a Taiwanese variety talkshow called 康熙來了 which he co-hosts. I occasionally tune in on Youtube usually out of procrastination, which pretty much is 80% of the time. Anyway, the point is: I have actually experienced the author's conversational skills. His speech is humorous, specific, and occasion-fitting.  

The original plan was to attend the author's actual speech. But since we all had rather different plans this summer, we never really got together to plan it out. Then I saw his book in the bookstore and thought, Why not? Afterall, the suave talkers are  the ones who get what they want, much to the bitter distaste of the dull-talkers, like me. Therefore, I bought this book with hopes of it turning me into the observant youngest sibling who knows instinctively what tickles an adult's ears you can probably guess what order I was born into, the student council president who can make the student adminstrators nod assent and the students follow his every syllable as if mesmerized, or perhaps the silver-tongued talkshow host like the author himself.

Yes, I am an avid believer in the power of books. That they can change people. Call me naive, but you can never tear me away from the self-help book aisle.  God bless the publishing industry and the authors who are struggling to survive in this internet-controlled world.

Now, finally, let me get to the book. The book is split into short, concise chapters, each with a lesson on speech. This is one criteria I always look for when picking up Chinese books, because my attention span for Chinese readings is usually a quarter of that which takes to read anything in English. Each chapter, the author provides real-life examples along with his perception in simple language such that it was easy to grasp the main point of each lesson and its effects on people in conversation.

Another delight is the four-panel comic strip in front of each chapter drawn by a so-called 熊寶 (the direct translation would be: baby bear). All his comic strips revolve around the main character bear and his friends and are related to the lesson at hand. The drawings are all so cuddly and cute they could make a girl squeal. EEE!

What I really liked about this book was its main theme. The author stated specificly that the main goal of this book wasn't to help people become clever locutionists, but rather to help people rebuild their ways of conversing such that they become more lovable. I was also surprized by how easy it is and how silly we often miss the easiest things when we're actually opening our mouthes and yaking with each other.

I recommend this book to anyone lacking confidence in their speech and soial skills or to anyone looking for an easy read.