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Comment by wintermutestwin | Hacker News Reader

>the publisher had the author pad it out to X00 pages because that's what makes their business model make sense.

I got a subscription to Blinkist this year and use these ~20min audio summaries to determine if I think it is worth slogging through the whole book for more detail. It rarely is with modern non-fiction. I read most non-fiction to absorb information and learn new ideas, not for the joy of reading - that's what fiction is for. Of course the genre of non-fiction book is usually indicative of how much it is full of blaa blaa anecdotes, etc. Blinkist is at its best when listening to self improvement for example.

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I tried blinkist but it never stuck. I think long-form stuff is better for developing semantic memory. Sure you can get to the point quicker with shorter form content, but tends to be less sticky.

I haven't gone back to blinkist to try this but I think a way to build up semantic memory with blinkist would be listening to every single title in a specific category to go really deep on that one category. At that point you're doing the equivalent of reading a full length non-fiction book anyway, so you haven't saved time, but at least you could triangulate what the core ideas / themes are through the entire category and really get the lay of the land whilst also getting the core messages deeply ingrained.

I've found that ChatGPT makes outstanding summaries of famous self-help/non-fiction books. Particularly if you ask it to give you a 100 word summary of each chapter.

Many people write in this thread about summaries, but in my opinion, the book is more than that. What I'm searching in a book, besides relaxing and other stuff, is ideas. I always find interesting that most boring part of the a book introduce some great ideas, or advices. Like when you expect it at least, they appears - like finding your better half. If you try to search for a one, the chances are that you won't find one. They appears in some random hidden places. That's how I see books. There's always something hidden where you don't expect it. Also I read a book from cover to cover, for the reason I explained before.

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