crabbygirl reviewed The Art of Friendship by Samuel Roger Horchow
Review of 'The Art of Friendship' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
[guessing at the star rating / mining my old FB notes now that they are almost impossible to find]
at first this how-to bugged me - sounding too much like a business manual with its emphasis on how to make connections (lots of ways which seemed insincere. and what's the point of faking yourself in order to get a friend? that's not a real friend)
this father and daughter team seem to enjoy name dropping and they dropped alot. they've produced broadway plays, have worked for steven speilberg, and know folks in the white house... so maybe they owe their extensive list of friends to their backgrounds? they do sound gosh-darn exciting. heck, their friend (!) malcolm gladwell furnished a foreword to the book. man, i'd love to sit next to him at a dinner party...
so the new thing is 'hiving' - the social answer to nesting - where …
[guessing at the star rating / mining my old FB notes now that they are almost impossible to find]
at first this how-to bugged me - sounding too much like a business manual with its emphasis on how to make connections (lots of ways which seemed insincere. and what's the point of faking yourself in order to get a friend? that's not a real friend)
this father and daughter team seem to enjoy name dropping and they dropped alot. they've produced broadway plays, have worked for steven speilberg, and know folks in the white house... so maybe they owe their extensive list of friends to their backgrounds? they do sound gosh-darn exciting. heck, their friend (!) malcolm gladwell furnished a foreword to the book. man, i'd love to sit next to him at a dinner party...
so the new thing is 'hiving' - the social answer to nesting - where you invite people with common interests to your home to explore a lecture series, or movies, or games. you know i'm an introvert when the thought of organizing an event like this makes me a nervous wreck! but, on the opposite side of that, they also emphasized the deep satisfaction of one-on-one friendships, and gave ideas of how to keep older relationships fresh.
mostly i was awakened to how money plays into maintaining friendships: dinners or lunches, movies or broadway shows, yearly visits to far-flung friends, little gifts (but gifts just the same). no one seemed to just walk in the park, or heck! hang out at the mall. isn't that how we did it on the cheap when we were in our teens? reflecting on the money issue, i can recall many invitations i turned down over money concerns. who knew they were disguised friendship requests?