Because some readers are less social than others, when they reserve a room people will be able to choose to designate Book Club or Book Worm. If they just want to be left alone, they are book worms so they'll get the polite basics. Warm but not outgoing, read in a comfy chair in front of the fireplace in peace. If they are book club, they can talk to me and have coffee and such.
It is an easy thing for me to switch. I do it all of the time. I learned it from my father, who was gregarious around others while quieter at home. He picked his spots but when he was in a social setting he'd talk to everyone with a smile, and make jokes. It was embarrassing because I had heard all of the jokes before but I never heard anyone mutter anything like 'what a dork' when he wasn't around. He instead made people smile.
Dr. Gillian Sandstrom apparently had the same type of father, as she recounts throughout her upcoming book Once Upon a Stranger: The Science of How “Small” Talk Can Add Up to a Big Life (March 31st, 2026, from Harper-Collins.)
I am not a journalist, though I've written for lots of newspapers, but one of my favorite compliments was taking a GETT (an early ride-share service) in Manhattan and having a conversation and at one point the driver pivoted and asked, "Are you a journalist?"
The oddly specific question surprised me but I wanted to see where he was going with it so I replied, "Yes, why do you ask?"
He said, "Because you listen."
I realized how like my father I had become. I made small talk, maybe I made a joke, mostly I listened. The listening made strangers think I was a good conversationalist.
Dr. Sandstrom was more intentional in embracing the power of small talk because she is, as she wrote, more introverted. I write for a living so in most ways I am as well. Friends laugh that if I leave the house I am in a sport coat, shaved, and prepared to be photographed, when they know if they visit me unannounced, I might not even be in pants. In Michael Shaara's novel For Love of the Game, the protagonist, a baseball pitcher, flips his mental switch from distracted normal human surrounded by 30,000 fans in a noisy stadium to professional athlete who is only focused on himself and the batter, with a mantra; "Clear the Mechanism." The noise fades away, his confidence grows. I clear the mechanism by putting on a sport coat. I am no longer a writer alone in my office, I am Outdoor Hank.
As Once Upon A Stranger shows, you can do it also. It just may take some people more practice than others.
Most people will have lots of reasons to worry about engaging in small talk, like 'I may be rejected' or 'they may get the wrong idea' but most other people are also 'hiding in plain sight' when it comes to small talk. They wouldn't reject it, they are not opposed to it, but they assume you are, the way an alarming people have impostor syndrome and think The Other Person in conversations won't find them interesting. If we all fill out a survey saying other people are getting less from conversations with us than we are, we're all selling ourselves short.
The book recounts experiments and behavioral data that show neither rejection nor people getting 'the wrong idea' are likely. Outside 10 pm in a bar, when is the last time someone hit on you because you said their t-shirt was humorous? It's rare. And 87 percent of the time small talk conversations are not regarded as weird and lead to rejection. With practice, knowing when someone clearly does not want to talk, like if they checked off Book Worm at a library bed-and-breakfast, your failure rate will plummet.
Dr. Sandstrom uses the analogy of watching films. Are they all great? No, but you don't stop watching them all after you see a bad one. So it can be with conversations. To stay with baseball, since opening day is this week, if you fail 70 percent of the time going to bat, you are going into the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, so I'll take 13 percent failure in just about anything except skydiving.
See? I made a joke that is lame, not caring if it is rejected.
That's me. I'm her dad. And my dad. And her. Maybe it can be you also. If that is your goal, Once Upon A Stranger is a great place to start.
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