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Caroline Goyder: Gravitas (2014, Penguin Random House) 4 stars

Review of 'Gravitas' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book focus on why some people naturally capture your attention and easily address a crowd - how can you be more like them? I enjoyed it, even though I found the last sections more useful than the first ones. The only dull thing I noticed is that too many sentences are lost in dissecting words' origins. Not only meanings evolve with language, being someone who natively speaks a Romance language means I already know the meanings. Having said that, this book gives excellent hints and great pointers to be more confident, be a better public speaker, improve your meetings (both physically and virtually) and succeed in interviews.

Even if I am a confident public speaker, it is interesting to see why I do some things, why I force myself to smile before talking and so on. It is revealing to understand the little things I do, and helps me hone those skills to become a better speaker. Finally, I think this content works better as an audiobook than a book, the author is the narrator and Goyder is great atchaging intonation so you clearly listen to the differences in the spoken words when your posture changes.