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Call me naïve, but I never suspected what havoc writing a book about conversation would wreak on my social life.

When I meet someone new, however well we are getting along, the instant this fact is revealed the other person takes a deep breath, then a step back.  Then they start apologising,   assuming I'm about to rate their conversational prowess.  Or - and this is worse - they expect me to dazzle them with spontaneous repartee.

I'm not yet a recluse, but it took some temptation to break my post-Christmas party fast last week, when I ventured from my home to Albemarle Street, an elegant Georgian thoroughfare off Piccadilly. 

You might make such a trip for several reasons. 

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"Anyway..." I said.

In truth, Gav and I never had much to say to each other. He was the reprobate mate of a boyfriend at university, and to him, no doubt, I was the snooty girlfriend. We were only talking, twelve bewrinkling years later, because we were at a wedding, watching my ex and his bride perform a strange, leaping dance, some Russian variant on the volta, with which Elizabeth I and her toyboys used to outrage the royal court.

I didn't voice this opinion, lest it was misinterpreted as sour grapes (I love my husband, I like my ex and his lovely bride, just so's you know). Before I thought of something else to say, Gav spoke.

"So, what are you up to?"

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So what do you want to talk about today?  How about Alexander Selkirk?

The first question may strike you as odd, but it's as worth pondering over breakfast as what you'd like for dinner.  Simply asking it will sharpen your awareness of your world and what intrigues you in it.  And when it comes to that next encounter, be it at the coffee stand, over the watercooler, or warming up before a boardroom slam dance, you'll have a distinct advantage.

To love conversation is to appreciate that every person you meet is a portal to another world, that every encounter is a potential adventure.  It can make you happy because it fills life with possibilities - whether shooting the breeze with strangers, or resolving dilemmas, whether burnishing ideas or aceing job interviews.

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Catherine Blyth is one of our guest bloggers during the week of February 2nd. If you have any questions for Catherine Blyth , add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about The Art of Conversation:

A wide-ranging, exhortatory look at the pleasures of great conversation, including strategies for how to bring it about, from the witty pen of an Englishwoman wise in its ways

In The Art of Conversation, Catherine Blyth eloquently points out the sorry state of disrepair that conversation has fallen into-and then, taking examples from history, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and popular culture, she gives us the tools to rebuild. Her prose embodies the conversational values she promotes: It's smart, succinct, self-deprecating, and light on its feet.

The Art of Conversation isn't about etiquette, elocution, or knowing how to hold your teacup with your little finger crooked just so. It's about something simple and profound: connecting. In our distracted days, it's easy to forget that each of us possesses a communication technology that has been in research and development for thousands of years. Conversation costs nothing, but can bring you the world.

Blyth offers us a chance to revel in the possibilities of conversation. As Alexander Pope nearly wrote, "True ease in talking comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance." Okay, Pope was actually talking about writing, but Catherine Blyth has that skill as well. When you have read The Art of Conversation, you'll not only know the steps, but hear the music like never before.