2020: I LOVED THIS BOOK. That's because one of my top goals in life is to get all of my friends to become friends with each other, and I think our priority as a species is to connect to others on this planet. Every single person who is ever going to meet with a group of people EVER should read this book.

This book is ESSENTIAL now, especially because meaningful connection is as scarce as ever as we navigate through a pandemic, and many people are having deeper discussions on racial tensions within our society. Parker hits home when inclusion AND exclusion can better benefit a group, and rips apart Martha Stewart's guide to party planning. She does what Gladwell tried to do in Talking with Strangers, but much more successfully, and with much better case studies (and I'm not just saying that because there is a Tough Mudder shoutout in the book).

I have so many takeaways from this book that will directly benefit both my personal and professional life: "Chill is a miserable attitude when it comes to hosting gatherings." Focus on the design and the layout of a room, which primes your attendees to expect certain things to happen in the meeting. What are the etiquette biases that your guests are bringing with them to the meeting, and what rules can you instate to counteract them? There are lots of vertical connections at a conference, but not many horizontal connections.

Parker gets bonus points for using the female pronoun whenever it's unclear what the intended pronoun of a noun is YAS!