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Comment by girzel | Hacker News Reader

I'm a writer, translator, and literary promoter. Sometimes I think I've never done anything more difficult than reading long works of literature and summarizing them faithfully in one or two paragraphs. It's absolutely brutal mental and compositional work.

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What's your opinion about services which provides summary for the books, such as blinkist?

Do you think those services are an asset or that it affects the book negatively? Do you think, if the original author wrote the summary; it would make a difference?

I have built news aggregators apps which uses summary from original description of author & also built bots which summarizes content; I'm conflicted between the value of a summary provided by the author /reader. I know that a book cannot be compared with a news article.

From what I learned from listening to an interview with a Blinkist founder Holger Seim on the Factory Berlin Facebook page, they employ experts in the fields that the books are about to summarize them. So while this is not an author-provided summary, it is (seemingly) closer than a mere reader summary.

Yes, they have mentioned that in their FAQ as well. But still, even though they're professional; they would still be a reader.

Edit:Typo

I feel a work of art is its entirety. Could you summarize Beethoven's 3rd in a few chords? Maybe, but think of the context you're missing out on. A novel exists as it is and it's more than plot. It's style and concept and form and feeling and sometimes you have to read the whole thing before you realize you got something of worth out of it. Sometimes you don't. But a summary can't possibly tell you this.

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