- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (6 Aug 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 014025837X
- ISBN-13: 978-0140258370
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 488,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
People spend vast amounts of money, time and trouble to achieve and maintain beauty, and yet despite its undisputed importance few of us devote similar efforts to be interesting. However, as Edward de Bono demonstrates in his new book, anyone can acquire this crucial, life enhancing skill.
About the Author
Edward de Bono lives in London, W1. His backlist titles include bestsellers such as: Text Book of Wisdom, Teach Yourself To Think, Six Thinking Hats, I am Right You Are Wrong, Teach Your Child How To Think and Water Logic.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
I was having a drink with Buzz Aldrin and his charming wife Lois at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
I was having a drink with Buzz Aldrin and his charming wife Lois at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am a big fan of Mr. de Bono's, but I was very disappointed in this book. I suggest that you stick to his books about creativity.
My two-star rating of this book is a combination of a three-star rating for the printed version for a young person with limited training in thought processes and a one-star rating for the Recorded Books audiocassette version.
This book begins with an intriguing premise: We should spend as much time and effort making ourselves interesting as we do with working on our physical appearance and clothing.
The book is all down hill from there.
I listened to the audiocassette version, and found it infuriating to be asked to compare long lists of random words and make connections. Since I listen to audiocassettes while I drive, this meant continually pulling over to write down the lists . . . then write out the answers. It took me half an hour to do the 10 minutes to or from work some days. DO NOT LISTEN TO THE AUDIOCASSETTE VERSION! Mr. de Bono should know better than to authorize such a version, unless he was going to develop different exercises that could be done easily while listening.
In the first half of the book, Mr. de Bono makes a point of stripping out subjects of normal interest such as emotion-laden topics, direct references to personal lives, and gossip. He also excludes using one's special knowledge to make one more interesting for the purposes of this book.
So the book is basically for someone who knows very little and wants to have free-form speculative discussions with little connection to reality. I assume that he has someone like a high school student in mind. Otherwise, the references and assignments are an insult to anyone who has studied any forms of thinking or communication.
I won't go so far as to say the book is boring, but I will say it isn't very relevant. Are you going to turn to your companions at dinner and suggest that they write down random lists of words and then connect them? I don't think that will make you sought out as an interesting dinner companion.
In terms of making someone more interesting to others, I suspect that reading a book containing little-known facts about human psychology and behavior would be a better use of your time.
Otherwise, this book simply encourages the uninformed to remain that way in a speculative haze of words.
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is not as idiotic or as tyrannical as some other self help books out there (yes Dr. Phil I'm talking to you) HTBMI does not have any kind of let-me-tell-you-how-your-run-your-life advice.
Edward de Bono's books tend to be good reads, even though some of his titles disappoint.
Unfortunately I feel that this is one of his weaker books. Whilst it remains an interesting read I felt that it simply put a fresh spin on ideas he had introduced in other titles. De Bono does not come of with a satisfactory definition for what being interesting is. The book is basically a series of exercises, which I felt was too narrow a scope for such a broad subject. Frankly, I expected more.
When Edward de Bono's books are at there best they rock your world. They open up brand new doors and turn readers into broad-minded free thinkers. How to become more interesting remains simply adequate.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was disappointing. It's interesting I suppose because he is not in the same spheres of thought as I am but it is irritating. De Bono says it would be predictable and therefore boring to call this book boring. I don't call it boring - there are enticing exciting insights, mainly revealed in the outline structure headings, the cover and in little moments of lyrical visionary expressiveness -'a good conversation is like Jazz'.
But there is a heavy tediousness, and lack of science and emotional sympathy with me as a modern woman, nor contextual awareness to much of the writing. I am prone to tedious abstraction myself, it almost goes with the territory of thinking as a pastime, career and identity.But he's so 'Boys Own' old-school mannish; the thinking exercises have repetitive themes of exotica and foreign climes, animals (frogs,sharks, mating habits), anthropomorphism, evolutionary psychology, engineering, sport, so many many provocative but odd suggestions in reference to sexual politics. He also targets religion, culture, conventional intellectualism, but in the way of a nineteenth century scholar. His 'interesting' is not very originally free-thinking. Sexist in a way which is sad without being terribly repugnant. Self-important but somehow disconnected from the world as I know it.
"I have known beautiful women who are very boring. I am sure there are beautiful women who are very interesting." - from the forward, page 6.
I hate his invention of the word 'po' to signal a conversational provocation for the sake of stimulus.
So! What if we didn't have the phrase 'what if', well then, theoretically speaking, in a hypothetical situation, you might like to invent the word 'po' -except it would sound too silly - there is a children's character - a Telly-tubby- called Po! And, as I demonstrated, it is completely unnecessary. De Bono is wrong when he says the English language lacks the forms and words. He almost talks as if chat is the only form of conversation and seems entirely independent of linguistic analyses.
I still like the man. Worth looking through, this book. It has some interesting ideas about 'interest' and socially-entertaining conversations and it's an insight into this influential thinker so I glad I bought it - but ...
But there is a heavy tediousness, and lack of science and emotional sympathy with me as a modern woman, nor contextual awareness to much of the writing. I am prone to tedious abstraction myself, it almost goes with the territory of thinking as a pastime, career and identity.But he's so 'Boys Own' old-school mannish; the thinking exercises have repetitive themes of exotica and foreign climes, animals (frogs,sharks, mating habits), anthropomorphism, evolutionary psychology, engineering, sport, so many many provocative but odd suggestions in reference to sexual politics. He also targets religion, culture, conventional intellectualism, but in the way of a nineteenth century scholar. His 'interesting' is not very originally free-thinking. Sexist in a way which is sad without being terribly repugnant. Self-important but somehow disconnected from the world as I know it.
"I have known beautiful women who are very boring. I am sure there are beautiful women who are very interesting." - from the forward, page 6.
I hate his invention of the word 'po' to signal a conversational provocation for the sake of stimulus.
So! What if we didn't have the phrase 'what if', well then, theoretically speaking, in a hypothetical situation, you might like to invent the word 'po' -except it would sound too silly - there is a children's character - a Telly-tubby- called Po! And, as I demonstrated, it is completely unnecessary. De Bono is wrong when he says the English language lacks the forms and words. He almost talks as if chat is the only form of conversation and seems entirely independent of linguistic analyses.
I still like the man. Worth looking through, this book. It has some interesting ideas about 'interest' and socially-entertaining conversations and it's an insight into this influential thinker so I glad I bought it - but ...
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