The basic idea of Blinkist is to take the best of new nonfiction and condense it into pieces just a minute or two long, with entire books summed up in a series of these “blinks” totaling 15 minutes or so. Titles are added regularly, harvested from best sellers, top-10 lists and user wishlists and suggestions.
Genuinely sounds like the most sociopathic bullshit app I’ve ever heard of.
Discovered it because my girlfriend recently joined a book club, and one of the attendees didn’t read the book, but instead listened to the summary on Blinkist and evangelised the concept of “reading” multiple books a day this way. I’ve been asking so many questions about this person ever since, the idea of joining a book club having only done this sounds like a shitty sitcom subject. The fact that it really happened just makes me want to know the person who thought this was a normal thing to do.
my old boss liked them and he forwarded us some blinks to read sometimes
pretty silly, think they’d only ever be useful to save you from reading crap pop-nonfic books that keep repeating the same points
can see why management people who want to appear knowledgeable on lots of subjects would be into them
While I loudly decry this I’m listening to a podcast interview with Naomi Klein/Kate Raworth/David Graeber and will happily drop references to their books that I haven’t read into future conversations.
I’ve recently accidentally bought a years subscription to this. There’s a hell of a lot of cod-philosophy and pseudoscience on there, but there’s some quality content too. Lots of history and geography stuff that are a good summary of more complex events.
