Book Summary App

Do you like reading nonfiction books? You probably do. Most working class people like to read nonfiction books in order to learn new knowledge and skills for the purpose of self-help, inspiration, and enlightenment. But, and this is a big but, we don’t have time to read. Most nonfiction books contain more than 200 pages from cover to cover, and research shows that most people don’t make it over the first 50 pages before they put the book back on the shelf. As much as we like to absorb new knowledge and keep ourselves up to date with the outside world, we simply don’t have the time and patience to dive into books. To make things worse, smart phones and social media have made our attention span shorter and shorter. Our minds have been trained to react to high stimulation medias such as pictures and videos. When we scroll through the feeds in social media, what catches our eyeballs? Pictures and videos. We are less likely to read if the feed is written in texts, let alone long texts. We will read a text feed only when it is short, such as the length of a tweet. It has been proven that videos and catchy photos on social media could get way more “Likes” than texts, and short texts get viewed more than long texts. In short, we have been trained on a daily basis to react to high stimulation events. Since our brain attention is limited, we become less likely to pick up a book – hundreds of pages full of texts that are of low stimulation. Even if we are courageous enough to pick one up, most of us don’t make it to the back cover before putting it back on the shelf.

To solve the problem of people not having time and patience to read, people have come up with book summary apps. They are smart phone apps that offer summaries on nonfiction books. Instead of spending weeks or even months to finish a book, you can now get the essence of the book in less than 15 minutes. Basically, someone else has read the book, distilled the core ideas and insights, and summarized it professionally for you. Most apps offer the summaries in written and audio formats. You can either read the written summaries or listen to the audios. By using these apps, you will no longer have excuses not able to “read” books. Compared to picking up a physical book, you are much more likely to squeeze 15 minutes out of your busy schedule to either read or listen to the book summary. You can easily finish a book while taking a bus, waiting for your soybean milk latte, or during your workout in the gym. This article will give you four advices from finding the app that suits you to getting the most out of the experience.

1. Do your homework before choosing the app

There are plenty of book summary apps out there, and they are usually available on both iOS and Android systems. Type “book summary” in your app store and you will find plenty of them. Each app is unique in terms of their libraries, payment options, and user experience. While Blinkist, probably the biggest player of all, offers the biggest library with over 3000 bestselling nonfiction book summaries, Instaread delivers exclusive contents from Harvard Business Review and New York Times articles. I suggest that you read through the app descriptions and see if their unique selling points appeal to you.

In terms of payment, most apps run on a subscription model. You pay a monthly or a yearly fee in return of the book summary service. Some of them offer one week free trail so you can fully experience the app the first week without financial commitment. Some apps offer free version but you get a limited selection of books or run the app with a lot of advertisements. In addition, each app is designed differently so your user experience will vary from one app to another. You are suggested to download a few apps, try them out, and select the one that’s best for you. You may also Google user reviews of different apps if you don’t have the time to try them on your own.

One tip to select your app is to see if the summary is written and recorded in a single summary or broken into bite-size chunks. The app I use breaks down a book summary into sizable chunks (usually 8-12 chunks) with each chunk lasting no more than 2 minutes. I find this approach more digestible. You may want to check out how the summary is formatted in your chosen app.

2. Start with a book you have previously read

If you have never used a book summary app, I suggest that you start with a book that you have read before. “Reading” a book with a summary app is a very different experience compared to reading a physical book. By starting with a book you have previous read and are familiar with, you can put your focus on the experience itself rather than the actual content. Is the app interface user-friendly? Are you able to navigate without much of a learning curve? By starting with a book you have read, you will also be able to evaluate the quality of the summary by comparing it with the materials you have read before. How much content, data, and examples were omitted in the summary? How well does the summary capture the core idea of the book? Is the voice recording easy to listen? Is the pacing okay? Again, at the very beginning you want to immerse yourself in the experience rather than content, and there’s no better way than starting with the book you already know.

For example, I started using the app with my favorite book, an all-time best seller “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I know the material cold. So, instead of listening to understand the content, I put my focus on navigating the app and get used to the experience.

3. Pause often, take note, rewind, and re-listen

When you read a physical book and come across an insight or “Aha moment”, what would you do? You would pause the reading, do a reflection in your mind, or even write some notes on the margin of the page. This becomes difficult to do when you listen to the audio summary when the talking fires like a machine gun. The narrator would not stop talking unless you hit the pause button. However, the pause and reflection are what makes reading so powerful in the first place. Without the process of reflection, we won’t be able to internalize the material, let alone putting it into our long-term memory. So, when you come across insights and “Aha moments” during your audio summary, don’t be afraid to pause, reflect, open the note pad app in your phone, and take notes. If you don’t capture your ideas and thoughts at that very moment, you will lose it with a blink of an eye because your attention will be drawn to the continuous talking of the narrator. Pausing and note taking is absolutely key if you want to get the most out of the summary. By the same token, when you hear something confusing or a difficult terminology, rewind the talking or restart from the beginning and give yourself another chance of understanding. Listening to audio summary is much like eating. We get the most out of it by doing it slowly and regular pauses. Gobbling up the food is bad for your health. Your stomach cannot digest too much food at one time. Unchewed food is hard to process, and you probably don’t get a lot of nutrition out of it. Pausing, note taking, and rewinding during your listening of audio summary is very much like eating slowly and chewing sufficiently.

Finally, I would recommend that you re-listen to the audio summary after you have finished it. Because of the fast pace of talking and the huge amount of highly condensed content, our brains won’t be able to process all the information the first time we listen to it. This is especially more pronounced for those whose first language is not English. By re-listening to the same summary over and over again, we will be able to slowly process the information, thereby making the most out of it.

One more tip, if you find some terminologies from the summary hard to understand, you may read the written summary and listen to the audio simultaneously.

4. Use the app like a screener of great books

A book summary will give you the core ideas of the book, but it won’t give you all the data, background, examples, and recommendations from the author. If you listen to a book summary and you really like it, go buy the actual book and read it from cover to cover (because you have known the essence, you can finish the book fast and still benefit tremendously!) In other words, use the app as a screener of great books. As valuable as it can be, book summary apps cannotreplace traditional book reading altogether. Some classics, such as “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, has so much wisdom that a 15 minutes summary simply cannot contain. But the app can let you “test the water” and select the books you really like. Without the app, you run the risk of buying a book, reading the first 30 pages before abandoning it. Now it is occupying valuable space in your bookshelf. With the app, you only buy the physical copy ifyou really like the ideas presented in the summary. Imagine you finish one summary per day. That is equivalent to digesting over 300 books a year. You can gain a lot of quick tips and novel knowledge out of it. If you find 10 books out of the 300 that you really like, and you buy and read those physical copies, you are essentially taking a deep dive into the topics and mine the golden nuggets. In other words, you go for quantity with the app, then dive into quality with the carefully selected books. The book summary app allows you to greatly improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of your reading activities.

In summary, book summary apps are popular nowadays because of social trends and our short attention span. Book summary apps won’t replace the traditional book reading. Rather, it offers a convenient alternative. When using it wisely, it not only fills the downtime of your ears, it also gives you opportunities to increase your knowledge bank at a fraction of time and resources.

This article was published on Macau Manager Magazine, Volume 81.