How to Enjoy your life and your job

Pretty okay. This was originally recommended to me during college, to help deal with my shyness. I never finished it but still had my copy so decided to re-read it.

There's a lot of solid advice in here about how to deal with people, most of which comes down to “be nice,” but then explains how to do that. It's easy to think you're a nice person, but it's another thing to actually be shown a way to do it. It's also easy to be an ass, so a reminder now and then of how not to be an ass is good. And there are lists at the end of each major section of the important take-aways from each chapter.

That said, it's really framed more toward business conversations (though can help for every day stuff as well), and some of the examples are outrageous. There's one where a guy compliments an old woman's wallpaper, so she gifts him her car. Whether or not this actually happened, this book could have really done better to remove a lot of the really ridiculous examples - especially since there are so many. Some of the historical facts seem odd as well, and he talks positively about robber barons. So... don't get too hung up on all these, this is an old book. The examples aren't the important part.

If you're shy and awkward at conversation, this can give you an idea of what to say as a “I'm totally a normal talking human being and not a robot” sort of response. I've also recommended this to people who very clearly didn't know how to get their point across without resulting to insults right away.