Nice Guys' have chance

By Colin BrownCampus Times StaffSo, you’re getting ready to graduate and head out into the real world. This is when it dawns upon you that you haven’t had a date since you came to college. You start to realize that the world of dating is only going to get scarier from here.This is the scenario that “The Nice Guys’ Guide to Getting Girls” is anticipating. The book is pretty much what the title describes – a simple guide for nice guys to find, get to know and date women. It does this by providing a couple of topic-specific chapters. What becomes clear is that this book is more a marketing strategy than it is a romantic guide. There are constant references to the earlier book in the series, the modestly titled “Make Every Girl Want You.” Additionally, readers are reminded to check out the organization’s Web site for further information and constant updates, not only at the beginning and end of the book, but also at the end of several chapters.The text of the book also tends to read like the script of an infomercial. The way that the author describes the subjects of his studies, the testimonials at the beginning and simply his writing style are all reminiscent of a sales pitch.This is quite understandable. The Nice Guys’ Institute, founded by the author, runs seminars and teaches courses about this very topic, and this book is the logical extension of those seminars – it offers some of the important facts, and some things that can be used by themselves, without further classes or books. If, however, you are brave enough to wade through all the sales pitches, there are certainly some kernels of truth and good advice to be extracted. This book is not of the stereotypical “seduce and destroy” method. Everything that I read in the book were things that I already knew, such as how to show interest in a conversation or how not to talk about one’s self.The other strong point of the book is that some of its techniques for how to talk with people and initiate conversations are useful outside the dating realm. The book assumes that the reader is a generally nice guy, and it shows how to put many of its conversation tricks to use just getting to know people. Overall, this book is about being confident. It’s buried deep in there, but it can be found.This book, and the “Nice Guys” series, will probably never end up on a must-read list for college students, but it is certainly a nice effort. If you really need some desperate advice, and you can put up with all the gimmicks, it may teach you something worth using. Brown can be reached at cbrown@campustimes.org.