A book summary is a nutshell, and the short write-up and varied talks about the book in brief. It gives the main points keeping aside the details. It outlines important outcomes of the research work that has gone into the writing of the book.
Such reviews usually carry a learned format with them, both the good and the bad sides of the content. They not only give a newer perspective to the hidden text but also pave the way in understanding the pulse of the author and the subject, in general.
What is a Book Summary?
A book summary is a condensed version of a full book. It generally has lines of text that highlight the title of the book, along with a briefing about the author. Summaries of books talk to you about the main points that form part of these books.
By reading the whole book, you may write down your own notes or key points. Adding to this, by reading the summary too, you will be able to quickly reckon the content of the book that you read.
Therefore, by reading the summary, you get to know a brief insight into the content of the book. It contains all the important ideas of the original text and acts as the help book summary.
A summary, therefore, is like a review of the book. By reading the summary, you, as a reader or as a listener, get a fair idea of what the subject matter of the book is.
Usually, book chapter summaries run into one fourth the length of the original piece of write-up, however not exceeding around eight sentences in general. It has unique content that is objective in itself, apart from being concise and accurate.
Summary of books is hence understood to be the compressed form of books put in a few simple lines, helping the reader to actually guess the details of the matter presented in the respective books.
An effective summary hence compresses all that written in the book from the beginning to the end of the content, in a precise and in a much shorter form. Main point books essentially cover only the facts from the original book.
As a result, book summaries produce evidence and facts about the book without the reader having to spend time going into details, just like on the come up summary, which is honest in itself.
Generally, summaries win over books in terms of ease of understanding the synopsis, apart from saving a considerable amount of time. They hence form the bottom line of lifelong learning. And with the lapse of time, you begin to embrace many of these into your daily routine.
As a matter of fact, summaries usually have their own set of advantages and disadvantages, depending on how readers perceive them to be as part of their lifelong learning curve. You thereby move towards adding meaning to life.
Cons of reading book summaries
1.) You cannot judge a book by its cover or by its summary. Summaries of books might be covering important points. But they may not essentially cover all the important points, page by page.
Few aspects that are really important may not be highlighted as they might be important for you but not for the one who has written the summary. Perhaps this could be because the story is spinning around a different perspective.
2.) Your connection levels to the book strengthen only when you are actually reading through all the lines of the book. But, just by going through the synopsis or the help book summary as it is termed, you may not, in reality, be paying attention to the crux of the matter. You cannot get into the drama and envision scenes that make up the book.
3.) It is not practically possible to concise everything written in every chapter of the book. Just by reading the headings or going through about the topic in one or a few lines or by reviewing the book chapter summaries, you are sure to miss out on the big insights and facts that truly made the book big and great.
4.) Since summary only gives you an idea about the original book, you may end up interpreting facts in a different path from that of the author. You might also misjudge realities, the particulars, and other specifics the wrong way, similar to on the come up summary, which is irrepressible.
5.) Summary writers need not at all times be the same person as the author himself. So, by reading the summary of books, you are actually reading the original books through the eyes and heart of the corresponding summary writers.
Therefore, you will get the wrong idea of the book if the summary writer isn’t presenting it the way the author has written the book.
Pros of reading book summaries
1.) By reading the summaries of books, you grab a reasonably fair and just about a rational idea of what the book is all about. You, therefore, interpret the actual content of the book, from your experience.
2.) Summary of the book saves your time in terms of poor books that you can avoid reading and keeping in your library. On the come up summary is a classic example that showcases dynamism in the voice of its summary.
3.) Summary of books also saves your time in the sense that you can learn about varied issues and topics faster. You are taken through the journey of one month of time that you spend in reading in just about a few minutes.
4.) You can read a lot of books by reading the help book summary first. You can now keep moving on to the next book until the summary fits your kind of mindset and lifestyle.
5.) Summaries are mostly centered on facts and originals of the book. So, you can quickly memorize and recollect the main point books and the author, too, just by reading the summaries.
6.) Without you having to spend hours together in reading the entire book, you instantly gain access to the key points by reading the summary. This way, you can continue the spirit of lifelong learning in you and even tend towards grabbing more such summaries that quickly embrace you with loads of learning and wisdom too.
7.) Summaries wipe out the repetitive aspects that center around in the book. You, therefore, feel energized just by focusing on only the important subject matter. This way, you also rebalance the sphere of so-called lifelong learning that you cultivate over a period of time.
8.) The core idea of the book is easily conveyed by way of their book chapter summaries. All the background research work, evidence, and justifications do not always cultivate an interest in the mind of the readers.
9.) People are so busy that they always want shortcuts, which is termed as smart work. Summaries or the main point books are such smart mechanisms that result in you to decide whether you want to really pick the book or not.
Since book summaries center around facts and short ways to illustrate them, you'll likely come away from one summary with 3-5 things you'll remember. (fourminutebooks.com)
My opinion about the book summary
Books are of varied nature. You can have books on drama, fiction, comic, mystery, action, horror, fantasy, self-help, personal development, personal growth, or any other kind of literacy book. It is okay to read the summaries of books before determining whether to grab a book or not.
While summaries have their own pros and cons, you have to be decisive enough regarding your tastes and morale in life. Rather than just buying out any new book that is released in the market and putting it up for display in your personal library, you have to be choosy. Choose to accommodate your library with abstracts like an on the come up summary that electrifies the content.
Your collection of books determine the kind of person you are. The books that you read are the key to making or breaking your life. Therefore, the help book summary in a way actually helps you during the path of turning your life.
Conclusion
Usually, the back cover of the book talks in short about the book. This is what we generally term as the summary of books. Most book lovers first flip the book, read this summary, and then come back to page one. This attitude in the minds of readers lets them decide whether to proceed further or not.
But, if you seriously want to grab a wealth of knowledge into your world, you have to read the book page by page instead of just running through just the main point books. In order not to miss anything out, and want to involve yourself completely in the shoes of the author, you ought to pick it up and read.
The more you read the outlines of various books or the book chapter summaries, the more knowledgeable you get in life. This, in turn, helps you decide how you want to construct your life and shape it up for betterment and success.
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What is a Book Summary?
A summary is nothing but the description of the book, in short, covering only the main point books that the author actually wanted to convey. A summary is usually a synopsis that highlights only the focus area of the book. Most of the time, summaries are imprinted on the back cover page of the book.
On the come up summary, writing professionals are engaged by the authors who do this task for them. Usually, such summaries run from 6 to 8 lines when it comes to books that are academic in nature.
Yet other times, they also take about one-fourth of the actual content, depending on the type of book, whether it is fiction based, adventure-based, suspense based or any other kind of book on general literature or a biography of a famous personality.
Summary of books focuses primarily on the author and about the scholarly aspects of the book. It can also be, at times, the opinion of the summary writer about the book. By reading such summaries, you are taken into an altogether different perspective, which you may otherwise not be able to understand even after reading the book.
Therefore, a summary of books contains ideas from the original text interpreted from the core perspective. Summaries help you in understanding the brief of the actual book. At times, the summary also lets you look at the content from a different standpoint. This is primarily because the book is written by the author and the summary by the summary writing expert.
However, the summary outlines the core of the content. The main purpose of the help book summary is obviously to help the reader or the listener to quickly grab an idea of what the subject matter is, without having to go into details and reading through lines and lines.
Should You Read Book Summaries?
You may not be a great reader or a book worm, though. But you still want to grasp ideas from varied pieces of write-ups. This is when reading book summaries rescue you. They help you add new and main ideas to your thinking hat. All such main point books form vital to any summary. They are worth investing in, your time and energy, as they form the core of the book.
Before picking to read something, the first talk to yourself, understand whether you want to read because you want to kill some time, or really want to earn knowledge. Then, proceed accordingly by sticking to the executive summaries that would really make some sense and add value for your time.
Reading book summaries certainly saves a lot of your time and energy. Therefore, the help book summary in a way, guides you to understand whether or not to pick the book to read from start to end. There could be books with attracting book cover that might interest you. But the inner content may not really fetch you towards your motto of choosing the book. In instances like those, summaries guide you.
Summaries of books do not just give you an overview of the subject within, but they also let you think from a different perspective. Summaries also bridge the gap between you as a reader and the author as a writer. A summary writer may though, be a different person than that of the author himself, but you get to see the book through the eyes of the writer.
Overall, book summaries are worth reading if you have the interest to put them in a learned format for further reading and retrieval for later use. They are like pre-reviews about the book, similar to reviews of products that you check before buying something.
Which is the best book summary app?
Despite understanding the importance of reading a book, you cannot dedicate time efficiently for the same. The primary reason being the fast-paced world where technology plays a leading role. In this rushing world, you are so pre-occupied all the time that you cannot give reasonable time and energy in reading a book; leave aside the body paragraph for which you need more investment of time.
Even if you want to read books, it so happens that at times, the book that you read at the moment conquers your thoughts and actions. You, therefore, end up confused as to which book to pick next. Reading frequency is hence highly important that partners you in terms of choosing the right kind of book your beliefs and morale really ask you for.
In all such instances and for reasons better known to the reader in each one of you, you tend to switch towards applications that give you instant access to book summaries. Critical reviews are hence worth giving a reading. They guide you in terms of the experiences that other readers faced.
A popular summary of books apps are chosen by the nature of books that they shelf up. Depending on the nature of the book, different websites or blog spots or clubhouses or apps available online make their mark.
If you are playing the role of a student, then CliffsNotes is the app that suits you. If you were to choose between literature and fiction book summaries, then SparkNotes app serves you. And for the varied nonfiction books, you can choose from among renowned apps like Blinkist, Instaread.
They also provide access to listening to the executive summaries. Besides the above, Readingraphics is also worth picking in the sense that it provides audio, PDF, and even a graphical presentation for each book.
How To Read A Book Summary
Book summaries sound awesome when you have time constraints. Such book chapter summaries are usually written by professional writers who read and analyze from the author’s standpoint what the content is actually about.
To read a book summary, you should first acquaint yourself with the author, his/her mindset, and the flow of lines that go into the making of the book. Sooner, you will be able to easily understand from the summaries of such books of that particular author with ease.
Sometimes, the summary of books might convey a different and hidden perspective of the author’s lines of text. You need to have the wisdom to inspect and analyze the write-up conveyed in the form of summaries. It is even wise if you can make out your own summary.
Be an active reader or a listener when mastering and grasping the art of reading on the come up summary outlined just behind every book. This way, you maximize the value and the worth of the effort that has gone into the making of the book, though you may essentially not be reading the whole book in itself.
One classic way to read a book summary and feeling the pulse of the author is by making your own notes from the summary and putting them to practice. When you read a summary once, you get a few important points worth noting and reckoning later.
When you read the summary for the second time, you get fewer more important points. But when you read a summary every now and then, say once in every six months, or a year, new ideas emerge in your brain. Such kind of a thought process gives rise to fresh opinions, thoughts, and result in you being more creative and imaginative. After that, the summary alone would suffice.
How to Structure A Book Summary
When you begin to write the summary for a book, know about the author first and then read the book compiled by the author. By understanding about the author, you understand his write-up even better. Write in short and simple words, but extract the main point books and stamp them out in your own words.
At all times, ensure that you do not deviate from the focus point of the book or spin your own story from your assumption. Make it a habit to keep reading the book review under each book posted over the Internet. Just publish the ideas of the original text and present them in a much easily readable form.
Once you are done introducing the author and the title, move on towards bestowing a quick overview of the entire content along with few most important points. Imagine the book that you chose to write a summary of is one of your favorite books. With this attitude in mind, you cultivate an interest in being legitimate at your work. Carrying this mindset, you will structure out the best in you.
Now, as you keep writing, get into the body of the summary as if you were writing the body of a business letter. In this space, elaborate in little more length about one or two main point books that you stated earlier in here. By focusing on a precise area of the subject, you get to give an in-depth picture and communicate clearly to the readers, the author’s standpoint.
And finally, conclude in your own words all the entire table of contents that you have identified basis your own ability, apart from what the author has center staged in the book. Here, you may also add lines that represent the overall principle and premise of the book.
Why Write a Book Summary?
You should write on the come up summary of a book to help readers quickly absorb what the content is all about. Summaries also act as instant reckons for you to refer them back later, just in case you forget what the book was about, though you must have read it.
Having said that, irrespective of whether or not you read the full book, summaries fetch you with ready to access important pieces of information, which you otherwise might have skipped to memorize despite reading the entire book page by page till the very end. This is one very important reason why the summary of a book or a subject matter should be written in particular.
Apart from the above, summaries highlight the focus areas of the book. Thereby, any reader can easily access the book and decide fast whether it serves his/her purpose or not. Because not all books do you read by yourself. You also buy books to gift others. In such instances, book chapter summaries help you make quick and healthy decisions.
If you want to learn something effectively, then you should identify and understand the golden details first, which is nothing but a summary of the content. Lessons learned by way of every single point in the summary should connect to the reader so very carefully that he/she should feel moving along with the mind of the author.
You should, therefore, write a full book summary to swiftly recollect from these few points, the entire subject matter. It hence improves your reading, grammar ability, and adds value to your time. It goes without saying that the summary saves considerable time for the readers who wander around to pull out time from their busy schedule. This apart, summary acts as an instant recollection of spontaneous thoughts and ideas.
Should You Read Book Summaries?
You should read summaries to check if the actual book can really grab your attention and interest. The help book summary lets you decide whether or not to read the full book.
From a summary, you not just analyze the focal point centered on, in the book, but also check if they can really connect to your kind of thoughts, values, and morale in life. You also get to know about the author without actually reading author books or biographies.
Specific books that don’t fall under the curve of your values and ethics as part of your lifelong learning, you can skip to buy them, by learning from the summaries of such books.
Book summaries also save a considerable amount of time when you have to present something that is written in the book. By reading book chapter summaries, you can jump ahead and recollect mindful and sensible aspects that you wish to cascade further. They reroute you to success.
Especially when time and resources matter most, you should ideally choose to read the full book summary instead of the whole book. Your interest levels after reading the summary will let you decide whether to read the background work of the book or not. Summaries, in fact, instill in your brain for longer than the varied ideas presented in the lines and lines of text in the actual book.
Since summaries are a synopsis of the actual content, despite you read the whole book, you should also take a few more minutes to read the book chapter summaries. This way, the concepts instill in your brain for long.
Hence, book summaries are worth reading and spending time on. While in a healthy debate or a conversation or a presentation for that matter, summaries fetch you readily over the whole book.
How to Write a Book Summary, Step-by-Step
When you are writing the summary for a book, it means that you are actually working hard in grasping vital information and then putting forth the key ideas of something that has already been written. To smoothen things, begin to write an on the come up summary of a book by following the below 7 steps.
Step 1 – Investigate about the author and about the book and get abstract information about them. Write introductory lines on both the author and highlight a few aspects of the book. Also, identify your target audience at this juncture.
Step 2 – Read the original book in full. Now, re-read it. Reading frequency is important at this stage. And as you keep reading for the second or the third time, jot down all the key points as and when you realize them flow in the book.
Step 3 – Make a bullet list of all such highlighted points you made in step 1 above. Make a list exhaustive enough, even if they sound repetitive.
Step 4 – Group the above bullet list points in step 2, by their main subject or aspect. Rearrange and organize them to make sense.
Step 5 – Of all the bullet forms that you enlisted above and categorized, pick one good idea, which is actually being carried throughout the book. Focus on this idea and connect it to the other secondary ideas that follow.
Step 6 – Finalize the word count. Add more sentences or elaborate more on the same idea, if need be. However, ensure that you do not deviate from your enlisted bullet form and also from what the author is talking about.
Step 7 – Add your viewpoint and draft up some closing lines, in a way that you attract the reader to grab more such books or such summaries of books.
Can I learn from book summaries?
The help book summary certainly encourages you to learn things fast and in a smarter way. Be it for work, or for school, or for making any short and spontaneous presentation, book summaries rescue you in need of the hour.
They help you stay focused on the key areas, which usually get faded away from the more you read. And for all such kinds of readers or listeners, book summaries are a great learning source.
Whatever be your reason, you are sure to learn and grasp the lessons learned from the lines of summaries as they help you remember things quicker and further help you percolate them even quicker and in a much smarter approach.
Since book summaries capture the important ideas jotted down in the book and remain unbiased, they are worth investing your time in. They turn into your favorite books over a period of time. During the process, there are good chances that you could also be fascinated by just the summaries in comparison to the whole book.
Book summaries solidify what is stated in length. Sometimes, a book review is also worth giving time to read and note information, as they take you through a different viewpoint altogether. They also reflect the information from the original book and are much easy to store and retrieve at a later stage. This, however, demands your attention.
The idea of a most important line of reasoning is worth it when compared to the smaller contentions. You easily and very effectively get abstract exposure into the main content without having to witness all the research work that has gone into it.
In all probability, investment in ideas per hour usually wins over all the background work that resulted in so. Therefore, summaries teach you a lot in a lot less time.
Can I find all books summarized?
Summaries of books are brief descriptions of the original books. You can find all the books summarized, be it academic or literature or action or fiction or anything else, for that matter.
Every author who finishes writing a book is, for sure eager to know the feedback. And to help the smooth flow of this transition of bringing the book to the world and letting readers come up with their feedback, the author engages a summary writer. Such summary writers ensure to highlight important aspects that run into the book and make it easy for readers and listeners to grasp things early and with much ease.
Over a period of time, a good number of summary writing portals came into existence. Renowned websites that serve the purpose are to Optimize.me, Paul minors, four-minute books, the book summary club, Nat Eliason, etc. to name a few. Many other websites also offer this service.
In fact, the readers of the modern era are so much occupied with the mundane tasks that they prefer to read the summary over full books. This is the reason that you find all books published being summarized in the first place.
Apart from these portals, book summaries are also made available on various clubs, youtube channels, and blogs. Noteworthy apps on Google Play App store are also available for easy download. Few of them include Blinkist, BookNotes, Sumizelt, getAbstract, 12min.
All these provide you access to reading and also listening to book summaries, apart from allowing a downloadable format that you can save for later.
Above all, the last cover page behind every book usually holds the bullet points exposed in the book, which is nothing but the summary of the book. Besides, most book catalogs and authors’ web pages on the internet, also accommodate the same.
How to Write a Book Summary Cheat Sheet
A cheat sheet is that piece of paper that you scribble your notes on. The main intension is to cheat someone, especially your invigilator, in an examination. Such sheets exhibit both your strengths and weaknesses in terms of your ability to not just summarize but also how, without that sheet, you proceed further in drafting the summary.
During the process of writing the summary of a book, you keep scribbling a lot of notes. You keep noting down content that is key to reproduce in the summaries of books.
To write such a book summary cheat sheet, you need to first read the whole book. And reading once isn’t really sufficient. You need to read it for a minimum of 2 or say 3 times to add more points to your cheat sheet. And, as you keep reading, you have to note down important aspects, ideas, and points that form the underlying focus of the book.
Every single topic has a take away in it. Besides, there will always be a group of readers who post their reviews beneath. All such critical reviews take you through varied perspectives.
Hence, be active and attentive to grasping all such takeaways that are worth being incorporated in summary. You might be ready with cheat sheets since you read the book twice or thrice by now. You should also make noteworthy points from reviews of prominent and legitimate readers.
Such cheat sheets might run into lines and lines of text, but while shaping up a final summary, ensure to highlight one or more main points from these cheat sheets. You can choose to pick the ones that are repetitive in nature, as the author perhaps wanted to emphasize them. This is how you write a book summary cheat sheet.
Do you love to learn, but have no time?
In this fast-paced world, your life has become so busy that you hardly spend time on self-development and growth to uplift your lifelong learning style. You always keep rushing through monotonous tasks that keep you busy all day long. But here you need to understand one thing.
By repeatedly doing routine tasks, you might gain professionalism and expertise in addressing or handling in the best possible way, these mundane tasks. But you should realize that you hardly learn anything new from them. Hence, you need to take out time to learn something new.
You might be having the zeal to learn a lot. Still, given this kind of a situation that is stated above, you will certainly feel having a lot less or no time at all for reading or engaging yourself in the lifelong learning process of knowing something new.
If you have the enthusiasm to organize a learned format, then you ought to spend time reading books to enrich yourself and keep yourself abreast of times. But given the time constraint factor in mind, you reduce the priority to learn.
However, by reading book summaries, you can save a lot of your invaluable time, balancing life with newer learnings that shape up your future and values in the lifelong learning curve you place yourself.
Book summaries give you quick and easy access to a wealth of knowledge without having to spend hours together in reading the entire content, including the body paragraph of many, along with the research work that went in the background.