Book Review: The Lost Art of Listening

The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships by Michael P. Nichols
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I only give this book three stars (I liked it) but would still say everyone should seriously consider reading it.

Reasons to read it:
1) It made me think hard about a huge part of my relationships, particularly family.
2) It contains a lot of wisdom about listening.

Reasons not to read it (and why I didn't REALLY like it):
1) Like a lot of psychology books, it could have been condensed to maybe half the length by cutting out generalized and extraneous case studies/examples. It is also very repetitive, again often the case for books on psychology.
2) It gets a few things dead wrong, because it approaches human nature and relationships from a general, contemporary Western, ultimately non-Christian viewpoint.

Great quotation (last line of the book): "Listening isn't a need we have; it's a gift we give."

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