madamos's picture

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Submitted by madamos on
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Our (and Your) Favorite Books

I just learned of the Executive Book Summaries product by Soundview [url]http://www.summary.com[/url] and I downloaded thier sample summary.

Basically, they summarize business related books into a 8 page summary hitting all the key points of the book. They have print and audio summaries available.

While I am trying to carve out more time to read, this product might save time and allow me to gain more knowledge sooner. I am sure that some of the summaries would cause me to want to read the entire book. I wouldn't want this as a shortcut, but more as a tool to guide what I read.

Anyone use this service or anything like it? What are your thoughts?

MadAmos

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Submitted by TomW on Friday August 10th, 2007 4:07 pm

I have a one year subscription that I will probably let lapse. I liked the first few summaries, but started finding that (1) I was not reading the summaries because I was not interested in a lot of them and (2) I could get as much information if I flipped through the book at Borders.

WillDuke's picture
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Submitted by WillDuke on Friday August 10th, 2007 5:05 pm

When I was still in college we called these "Cliff's Notes."

I never used them. I didn't want Cliff's education.

Now however, it sounds more attractive.

jhack's picture
Submitted by jhack on Friday August 10th, 2007 5:58 pm

Most business books pack 9 pages of material into a 230 page volume.

Now if we could get the summaries on a podcast, at 1.7 times normal speed!

John

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Submitted by WillDuke on Friday August 10th, 2007 6:06 pm

All right, who's going to do the reading for the podcast? John, is it going to be you and me? Are we the next M&M?

spiffdeb's picture
Submitted by spiffdeb on Saturday August 11th, 2007 4:30 pm

I love Soundview. I use it to determine which books I want to make the additional time investment to read. There is so much out there being published, with my limited time I find it helpful. It has turned me on to things I might not otherwise pick up. It is not my only method of finding the next book(s) I want to read but does a decent job of letting me know what is out there in more depth than trying to scan book jackets which often just have sound bytes from the author's friends.

I do not use this instead of reading business books!