A book for the socially awkward

You can -- sometimes -- tell a lot about a book by its trailer. Trailers for books are a still-evolving art form, but one thing for sure is that an amusing book with a funny trailer is a very good sign.

Enter “What to Talk About” by Chris Colin and Rob Baedeker, with illustrations by Tony Millionaire. Published by Chronicle Books, “What to Talk About” is meant as a helpful and humorous manual for conversation, as the subtitle suggests, “On a Plane, at a Cocktail Party, in a Tiny Elevator With Your Boss’s Boss.”

In the trailer above, Colin and Baedeker show a number of painful conversational gaffes for the socially awkward. Baedeker is a member of the San Francisco comedy group Kasper Hauser; Colin is a journalist and author of the Atavist story “Blindsight.” Their manual “What to Talk About” is out now.

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