Blinkist promises readers shortcuts to buzzy books, but can you digest all those big ideas in just 15 minutes? John Warner gave it a try.
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I must declare from the outset that when it comes to Blinkist, I was a skeptic.
Blinkist, for the uninitiated, is an app-based service that promises to digest the “key insights from 4,500+ best-selling nonfiction books and popular podcasts into powerful explainers you can read or listen to in 15 minutes.”
I was a skeptic, because the point of reading a book is to actually read it, not just to have read it. Even with nonfiction that is primarily informative, part of the experience is seeing how facts and argument are joined together to form the whole.
Blinkist digests longer texts into a series of “blinks,” 10 (more or less) mini chapters lasting one minute to to 90 seconds each that summarize one main idea. Aggregated, blinks do indeed distill full books to a 15-minute single shot; its text versions are readable in well under 15 minutes.
As I paged through the blinks on offer, I saw a number of books that I’d been curious about, but also knew I’d never have time to read — books, such as “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs and “One Billion Americans” by Matthew Yglesias.
As someone concerned about population and the environment, a billion Americans sounds like a not great idea to me, so I was curious about what Yglesias is up to. According to the blinks, he’s primarily making an economic argument, that lots of people are capable of lots of productivity, and that if we increase support for people through family-friendly policies or improved transportation infrastructure, we can achieve broader prosperity, even if we’re a billion people strong.
It’s an interesting and intriguing notion. The audio blinks are a bit straight and dry in their delivery, but they’re also clear and easy to grasp. They’re not constructed for narrative pleasure like a podcast or full audiobook, but at 15 minutes or less, by the time you’ve had enough, they’re over.
So far so good, but in listening to the blinks, the old teacher of writing flared inside of me. At each pronouncement, such as “Housing scarcity is the result of politics, not a lack of space,” I would think, sounds good, but ….
The “but” was a desire to know the underlying evidence to see where that conclusion had come from. By design, the blinks squeeze all of that material out of the book so we are left with only the conclusion, but conclusions by themselves, particularly when they are stated with a patina of authority, are dangerous.
This was my response to a book whose theses I feel generally well-disposed towards. Yglesias seems to be making a technocratic argument around greater sharing of our collective wealth to increase overall prosperity.
Without that evidence, though, it’s impossible to judge the soundness of those conclusions. We need to think more deliberatively for ourselves and spend less time digesting ideas for others. I want to experience the full marshalling of the argument.
Now, there are books that may lose less when converted to blinks, the kinds of books that don’t need to be books, as they’re primarily collections of bullet points.
Similar to CliffsNotes, we should see things like Blinkist as an aid, not a substitute. It did make me somewhat more interested in reading “One Billion Americans,” so there is that benefit. However, I would not want to pretend that having listened to the Blinkist digest that I have read and understood the book itself.
It turns out there is no substitute for the whole thing.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Circe” by Madeline Miller
2. “An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones
3. “Such a Fun Age” by Kiley Reid
4. “An Education” by Tara Westover
5. “Euphoria” by Lily King
— Linda H., Evanston
In addition to her recent reads, Linda provided me with a list of other books and authors she’s read, which while not necessary, is helpful in that allows me to steer clear of recommending something she’s already consumed. The list is filled with lots of usual suspects of contemporary mainstream literary fiction, which means I’m going to go back in time for a classic that shares some DNA with what Linda’s drawn to, but also clearly stands on its own: Mary McCarthy’s “The Group.”
1. “Then She Vanished” by T. Jefferson Parker
2. “The Last Match” by David Dodge
3. “The End of Her” by Shari Lapena
4. “More Better Deals” by Joe Lansdale
5. “Blacktop Wasteland” by S.A. Cosby
— John B., Palatine
A mystery, noir fan here, which allows me to recommend a mystery/noir writer who I think is underappreciated: Charlie Huston. Read his “Six Bad Things.”
1. “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins
2. “28 Summers” by Elin Hilderbrand
3. “The Bone Season” by Samantha Shannon
4. “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway
5. “A Good Marriage” by Kimberly McCreight
— Denise F., Mount Prospect
“All My Puny Sorrows” by Miriam Toews has a kind of drama and pathos leavened by wit that I think Denise will appreciate.
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read to books@chicagotribune.com.
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