Why I’m Wary of Book Summary Apps

Have we forgotten that more time = more personal transformation?

Last night, I did something out of the ordinary.

After dinner, I drove five minutes to Eagle Rock Reservation, a quiet patch of woods seemingly untouched by New Jersey’s overcrowding problem; there’s rarely anybody there except a few high schoolers smoking weed in the dirt parking lot.

I’ve considered going there for six months now. But I’ve never had the motivation to get around to it. At least once per week, eager for some connection with nature, I’d think to myself:

“Why don’t I go walk in the nearby reservation? It isn’t The Adirondacks of upstate New York. It’s not a week-long backpacking adventure. But there are trees, birds, deer, solitude, and peace to be found there.”

But that thought is as far as I got.

I never took action on it. Instead, I defaulted to my usual sidewalk routes in my neighborhood, like some complacent American bison following the same grazing trail he takes day after day.

So last night, when I found myself plunging into the forest at 7:30 PM, minutes before sunset, I paused for thought:

“What the hell was it? What broke the curse?”

The answer, as you might’ve guessed from the title of this article, is a book!

I had been reading Sacred Nature, a guide for restoring your connection with the natural world.

The writer’s philosophizing and practical tips, drawn from ancient religious traditions, had reminded me of the healing powers of a simple walk in the woods.

The impact of this book on my walking patterns got me thinking:

“What if, instead of reading the book, I had just read a summary of it through a book summary app like Blinkist or Chat-GPT?”

I’m sure I would’ve gotten the gist of the book’s core argument. But I doubt I would’ve ended up setting off into the woods.

Why?

One reason is that the book’s core message would’ve been stripped of the nuance, charm, anecdotes, and context that convince your mind of the author’s arguments and help you relate the material to your own life.

But there’s a bigger reason, and it has to do with time.

The time-based argument for reading full books

The more time you spend doing something, the more it affects you.

There’s this common misconception that reading books is primarily about acquiring knowledge.

It is, of course, about that. But there’s another half to reading—the part that takes place on your end, in your mind.

Reading a book is an intellectual conversation. It’s an intimate dialogue with an author who knows more about a topic than you do.

It’s a chance for you to think over what they are saying and respond, either in the margins, in a notebook, or just in your mind.

And, just like in a real conversation, the amount of time you spend immersed in that deep conversation will impact how much the conversation alters the way you think and behave.

A 5-minute chat is generally going to have less of an impact on your future behavior than a deep, drawn-out discussion while lying in the grass staring up at the clouds.

Put simply, a book’s ability to change your behavior is often tied to how much time you spend thinking about the book and its ideas, arguments, and stories.

Reading a full book rather than a 15-minute summary is important not only for acquiring more knowledge but also for prolonging the experience of contemplating the subject.

The more time you spend with the book, the more reflection you do on the material and your life.

For some reason, in our microwave society, many people seem to have forgotten about the benefits of spending more time doing something. Endless conveniences and corporate culture have convinced us that faster is always better.

But with reading books, as with hanging out with your child, writing a poem, or sitting by a lake, that’s not the case. Efficiency shouldn’t always be the goal.

By choosing book summaries rather than full books, we shorten the amount of time we spend in conversation with this thoughtful author.

As a result, we sacrifice depth, reflection, and self-transformation for speed. And something acquired speedily rarely sticks. It even less often moves us to action.

Concluding remarks

A dystopia that often pops into my head is one where no one reads books anymore, just summaries of them, to SAVE TIME (as if time spent immersed in ideas and stories was ever a waste of time!)

This newsletter was my short attempt to prevent it.

Obviously, book summaries and the apps that provide them have their use cases. Someone might use AI or Blinkist to refresh themselves on a book, get another perspective, or vet a book to see if it’s worth reading in full. These are worthwhile uses.

But in most cases, especially when we read a book to change the way we perceive the world and behave in it, reading the full book is going to be well worth it.

Five hours, even if you skip a chapter here and there, is going to promote far more change than 15 minutes looking over the “distillation” of the book (if that’s even been done correctly).

Happy reading,

Sam

Question for you:

• Do you use book summaries in your self-education process? If so, how?