Blinkist — Summaries of Non-Fiction Books
A Short Review
Blinkist offers “the most important insights from non-fiction books in short”. Meaning that they create short versions of books by highlighting most important knowledge into “blinks”. A book is made of multiple blinks and one book can be read in 15 minutes. Currently, the Blinkist books are available in their iOS and Android apps, and at blinkist.com.
I gave Blinkist a try the other day. I read two books: Power of Habit, which I had read before, and Fooled by Randomness, which I had never read before.
Having read the Power of Habit earlier I can compare my reading experiences. The short book summarises the main points of the original book really well, and it is written in a similar style. In fifteen minutes I really got the main points, believe it or not. Comparing the books, the one thing that I was missing are the real-life examples, which are sometimes quite elaborate. In the original book there are plenty of examples — such as the man who lost his short term memory but could still form habits — which are mostly missing from the short version. As for Fooled by Randomness, I can say that the short version was so good that I’ll most likely read the original one as well.
The Blinkist mobile app has an excellent user experience. The app shows the chapter descriptions making it easy to get a quick overview of the book.
Whilst reading through the chapters the app shows clearly how far you have gotten so far in the book. Overall, the app has implemented the iOS7 style with good taste with disappearing headers, and using swipes to navigate back and forth. In addition, it has good colours with proper contrast unlike most iOS7 apps that are mainly white with no borders.
As of Januray 2016, the Blinkist catalogue has more than 1,500 books. They also offer their summaries as audio books, which has been a huge hit for them.
My honest opinion is that Blinkist is an excellent choice to quickly learn what a book is about. Blinkist books are so fast to read that they won’t pile up on your night stand. On the other hand, to really understand a topic I suggest reading the original book to also learn about the small details that usually make the topic worthwhile reading.
Don’t just take my word for it but form your opinion by giving Blinkist a try. Sign up in their web page for a free.
