You Just Don't Understand, by Deborah Tannen

A book about how men and women communicate, to whit:

females engage in "rapport-talk" — a communication style meant to promote social affiliation and emotional connection, while men engage in "report-talk" — a style focused on exchanging information with little emotional import.

Fun factoid: apparently the trope that men refuse to ask for directions when driving originated in this book -- that is, it was just an observation she had personally, but then so many people said they'd had the same observation that it became... a collectively accepted observation, or whatever.

My reaction to this book is kinda similar to one I've had with many other books about men and women's social habits, which is that I identify with the supposedly-female trait. And I don't know what to do with that, because it could mean the thing is less binary than the authors claim, but it could also just mean that I'm an outlier or an unusually female-traited male or whatever, which seems perfectly plausible.

Things I'll remember from this book:

• for men, not-making-eye-contact during a conversation can be an attempt to avoid status-conflict and so actually a sign of emotional engagement. And so e.g. can have deeper conversations in a car, or sitting on a log, or some other setup that lets you both stare ahead while you're talking
• actually, this reminds me of something that I think was in Watching The English, but may have been in some other book: the idea that patients will actually talk to their doctors more honestly/openly when their doctor is not looking straight at them, such that behaviours like tapping on a computer or going behind the patient (which at-least-some modern medical training discourages) can actually be better for fostering openness.
• [there were meant to be more things here, but I never finished this post – if you're reading this parenthetical I also never went back and filled in....]