The German startup Blinkist promises incredible value to their users: Summaries of top nonfiction books condensed into 15 min reads and audiobooks. While this certainly sounds promising, one could certainly argue against reading summaries as they lose most of the book and its individual character. Thus, I wanted to present you with a list of arguments for and against using Blinkist or summaries in general.
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Cons
You’ll miss out on the majority of the book’s plot and humor. This is a problem since it makes reading less enjoyable. It also helps you remember a lot, even if you have to take notes, depending on how much you connect with the story.
You’ll miss out on major ideas and unexpected insights from truly excellent novels if you don’t read them. Every page of the best books hits you like a ton of bricks. It’s hard to condense their entire knowledge into a single paragraph. To get the most out of some novels, you simply must read them in their entirety.
You might understand things incorrectly due to a lack of context. A summary may present an idea in one way, but the context of the book may present it in a different light. However, because that context is no longer available, you must interpret.
Pros
The pros of reading book summaries include avoiding unnecessary information. This is particularly useful for books that only make one or two good points. It also assists you in avoiding bad books altogether.
You can learn about multiple topics more quickly. Instead of reading a meditation book for a month, you can read a summary in a few minutes. Then you can move on to the next mindfulness book or a different topic entirely.
You’ll probably remember more without taking notes. Because book summaries focus on facts and short ways to illustrate them, you’ll most likely remember 3–5 things from a single summary. It’s rather difficult in comparison to properly evaluate a book if you don’t take notes while reading it.
And remember: You can always get the book when a summary sparked your interest.
Would I recommend using Blinkist?
When using Blinkist, I personally enjoy the introduction to the book's ideas the most. It almost feels like a trailer of the book to me, yet it certainly comprises more information than a trailer. And when a summary was really interesting (or if I wanna explore the topic even further), I get the book on Audible and listen to it completely. Would I recommend Blinkist? Definitely!
Blinkist nudged me more than often to purchase a new book because I’ve found the summary interesting, so I simply had to get the whole book. Furthermore, I find myself reading more in general and I consume new concepts and ideas more quickly than before.
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Cheers,
NFInsights
