It's easy to get good table talk going if you have a little help in the form of questions, games, newspaper articles, books with fun statistics, things like that.
Make the important interesting.
I'm always trolling for trivia.
You and me will read a book and find three interesting things that we remember. But Colin finds everything intriguing. He reads a book about presidents and he remembers more of it because everything he reads clicks in his head as fugging interesting.
I'm a firm believer that no matter how small an object is, you can find interesting things out about it and its history.
We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.
It cannot be said often enough that science fiction as a genre is incredibly educational - and I'm speaking the written science fiction, not 'Star Trek.' Science fiction writers tend to fill their books if they're clever with little bits of interesting stuff and real stuff.
Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship.
When you go out for drinks, tell people to bring in a news story that made them say "Oh my god." Talk about it.
Who has time to make up stories when the truth is so much more interesting?
It sounds extraordinary but it's a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.
With comics you can put interesting and solid information in a format that's pretty palatable.
I like these nonfiction books where everything that is interesting about them is lost in that catch-all description of their "about"-ness.
