To me, book summaries are like buying a ticket to Disney World and then only riding the monorail while still thinking you got the entire magical experience.
Shane Parrish nails it with this:
“Everyone wants the summary. But the summary is what's left after someone else decided what matters. Their priorities aren't yours. Their filters aren't yours. When you operate on summaries, you're thinking with someone else's brain.”
One of the growing trends I have seen, but not adopted, is accepting a book summary as “I have read the book.” I am not in that camp, probably for a number of reasons.
First, I LOVE to read. So the act of reading is not boring, tedious, or difficult for me (which I know it is one or all of those for many).
Second, the idea of getting the summary from someone else falls in line with Parrish’s quote above. They are giving me their summary based on their lived experiences, their biases, their interpretations.
Third, I will openly admit that I end up with FOMO if I don’t read the full book. Like, what if the BEST LINE of the entire book is in that chapter I skipped? I know, I’m ridiculous, but I’m telling you how it is in my brain.
Fourth, even if the book isn’t that great, I can still get some great lessons from it. It may be as simple as “don’t write like this” or it puts me on the trail(s) of other books to add to my growing book list.
I fully embrace one of James Clear’s ideas: “Books are one of the nearest thing to a time machine humans have ever made.”
When you read a book, you are borrowing the wisdom from the life experiences of someone else with no DeLorean required. You can download their brain without the flux capacitor and awkward side effects.
All this said, I don’t judge anyone else that chooses to get the TL;DR versions. We all have different lives with different priorities and different limitations.
James Clear has a relevant quote on this: “In general, the people who benefit most from shortcuts are those who continue to practice the fundamentals consistently.”
So I wanted to share a few summary options out there for anyone who falls in the “summary works good enough for me” camp.