So Many Books So Little Time: Integrating Book Summaries in the Reading Hierarchy

10 Nov 2019

The reading community vehemently prohibits book summaries; a topic they consider blasphemous. Indeed, reading purists regularly proclaim that “reading a summary of the book is NEVER the same as reading the book itself” or that the only path to meaningful reading is to “sit down and read the book, cover to cover”.

Historically, the argument makes sense – books used to be hard to find therefore absorbing each book you get your hands on was the only path to knowledge. However, given today’s constant information overflow, books are a dime a dozen and a ‘cover to cover’ reading of all of them is no longer possible. This is where the time-saving benefits of reading book summaries might find their place.

But a declaration that book summaries are useful just because they save time is unwarranted and premature for 2 reasons. First, we need a broader view of the activity of reading in order to place the reading of book summaries in its appropriate context. Second, the antagonism of reading purists is strong and long-standing so to scrutinize it requires nothing but careful consideration and understanding.

The hierarchy of books and reading

Books exist in a hierarchy: some are better than others; therefore, the readings that books deserve are also hierarchical as one reading is more thorough than another. An illustration of these two hierarchies and their interplay is found in the popular book How to Read a Book, in which the authors – Adler and Van Doren – outline three hierarchical classes of books and the respective reading the books in each class deserve. The first class captures 99% of all books. These books are meant to be read for amusement or information hence they are not worth a diligent reading. The second class comprises less than 1% of all books. Those books are the ones that teach you how to read and how to live; they are meant to be read only once, but it needs to be a careful and analytical reading in order to absorb every drop of wisdom they have to offer. The third and final class of books constitute 0.01% of all books. The books in this category contain perennial wisdom and are therefore meant to be read multiple times regardless of how carefully you read them. These books are an intellectual fountain, in which each dip enriches you with a new pattern, a new concept or a new idea.

In this essay, I expand on Adler and Van Doren’s hierarchical structures of books and reading. First, compared to their 3-class system, here I only differentiate between Good books and Great books: the Good books are the 99% of the books that belong to Adler and Van Doren’s first class, while the Great books are the remaining 1% they place in the second and third classes. Second, for Adler and Van Doren the most thorough reading a book deserves is an analytical one, but if the book is not worth such a reading – as is the case with Good books – “skimming will do”. To that hierarchy I add the reading of a book summary (we will return to what each reading entails shortly).

Critically, although the hierarchy of books exhausts all books, the hierarchy of reading styles is based only on reading for knowledge. Other types of reading such as reading a book of poems, works of fiction, or for entertainment are beyond the scope of this hierarchy and this essay – see Figure 1.

Figure 1.

The hierarchy of books on the left and the hierarchy of reading styles on the right

The limitations of book summaries

The problems of reading book summaries, as evangelical readers will tell you, are numerous and overwhelming. These concerns can be grouped into four categories (see table 1). For example, when compared to reading a full book, the reading of book summaries precludes the development of critical cognitive skills such as concentration, flexibility of thought, and writing. Moreover, book summaries fail to provide context, anecdotes, and stories, all of which make up the glue that holds a book together. And when the glue is missing, the book’s thesis becomes vague and abstract, which, in turn, stifles the recall of the book.

Table 1

The limitations of book summaries grouped into four categories

As valid as those criticisms might be, there is another question that needs to be addressed for an exhaustive cost-benefit analysis: Do the benefits of reading book summaries, if any, outweigh the costs?

Reading books and book summaries – a differential skills theory

Here’s a proposal: the skills developed by the reading of full books are fundamentally different from the ones developed by the reading of book summaries. Hence, the skills you want to cultivate depend on the purpose of your reading.

On the one hand, reading full books develops depth of knowledge. Reading a book – especially if it’s a Great book – and spending time with it allows the book’s thesis to become a part of you – it expands your mind, it affects your behaviour, it touches your world. However, such a comprehensive and analytical reading also has a cost: it takes a great deal of time and a tremendous amount of effort. Hence, to decide whether the benefits outweigh the costs, we need to consider other factors, such as purpose: if you want or need to develop this depth of knowledge in order to answer a specific question or to become a specialist in a specific area, then the demands on your time and effort are justified. But hyperspecialisation, as a result of excessive focus on depth of knowledge, has costs too: a narrow focus in a single domain leaves you inept to find patterns across domains and unable to weave your ideas into a wider context.

Reading book summaries, on the other hand, solves both the problem of time and the problem of hyperspecialisation as reading book summaries develops breadth of knowledge. Reading a book summary of books that contain few, but useful ideas – which describes most of the Good books – allows you to save time while still absorbing most of what the book can give you. And if you read a book summary actively (more on that later), you will also be closer to situating the book in its context and realizing how it maps onto your existing web of knowledge.

Therefore, reading full books and reading book summaries are not irreconcilable activities. On the contrary, they can complement each other: while you carefully analyze high-quality books to develop depth of knowledge in an area of interest, you can also read book summaries to quickly and efficiently discover new ideas.

What reading does a book deserve?

Thus far, we have seen that there are benefits to be gained from different readings of a book. But a subsequent problem arises: how does one go about deciding how a book should be read – be it analytically, skimming or as a summary? There are no hard and fast rules, but there are 3 questions you can use that can guide you in the decision-making process (see Figure 2).

The first question is “Is it a Good book or is it a Great book?”. Good books, the 99%, are generally not worth an analytical reading. Those books contain one or two central ideas as well as a few corollary ones, all of which are usually comprehensible from a book summary. And because Good books contain a lot of fluff, their thesis can readily be distilled down to a book summary without loss of comprehension. On the other hand, Great books – the remaining 1% – deserve a careful and diligent analysis. These books not only deepen your understanding of an area of interest, but they also teach you how to live and how to read.

If the first question offered little resolution to the conundrum what reading the book in your hands deserves, then the second question might help – “Is it a practical or a theoretical book?”. A practical book, one that gives specific advice on how to achieve a goal, would lend itself better to a book summary, which should outline the steps on how to reach from point A to point B. If, however, upon reading the summary, the book’s advice seems strange or incomprehensible to you, then reading the full book is warranted, but skimming should do. If the book is a theoretical one, then further investigation is required to decide on what reading you should apply. The investigation can include reading the blurb of the book, the contents, or the publisher’s and others’ reviews; you can also search online for existing summaries and skim those to get a better sense of the book. Or perhaps you can direct the investigation to the author: you can look up what other writing the author has, whether they have given any talks or lectures on a topic related to the book, or maybe they have been on a podcast to promote the book (podcasts, by the way, could be a useful substitute if the book is a Good one). If this investigation does not yield a clear answer, you can take advantage of the next question.

The third question is “What is my purpose?”. If, for example, you are not familiar with a topic that you want to understand deeply, then you want to seek a Great book in that field that lays out the fundamentals, in which case an analytical reading is preferred. And if you’re already an expert in a field, or at least have a working understanding of the essential ideas within the book’s remit, then a book summary will do; and if the summary does not suffice, then skimming should.

Figure 2

Decision-making diagram to decide what reading a book deserves

How to read book summaries

Before contemplating how book summaries could be read, let’s spend a moment on how a book should be read – be it skimming or analysis. The most well laid out advice I’ve come across is by Adler and van Doren’s How to Read a Book so I direct the interested reader there¹. In essence, the authors argue that reading a book should be an active process, done in an unlimited time; the process should involve a careful analysis of the arguments, the logical flow and the evidence provided so that you can first understand the book, and second develop a rigorous review.

Likewise, I suggest a similar process for reading book. The crux of the process is that reading a book summary should also be a highly active process. First, you need to carefully source the book summary – if there isn’t a good one readily available, don’t read any; skim the book instead. Second, you need to read the book summary and try to find your own patterns in it – does this summary make logical sense to you, are there any underlying or implicit themes that stand out for you? After you’ve developed your own logical flow, use that as an outline and move to step three: take down your own notes in an active fashion. This means rephrasing as much as possible, adding your own thoughts and ideas, cutting down on what you already know and expanding on what you don’t. Once you’ve done that, the last step, which makes this process of reading a book summary highly effective, is to question yourself or create a story: what further questions about the topic arise from the book; if the author was sitting next to you, what questions would you ask them; if a friend asked you to give them a 5-minute summary of the book’s ideas, what would that look like.

With this approach to reading book summaries in mind, the problems posed earlier by purist readers start to disappear: active reading of a book summary makes it easier to remember the thesis of the book, it still fosters cognitive skills and you are the one creating a story out of the book as opposed to trying to memorize someone else’s (Table 2).

Table 2

Solutions to the problems associated with reading book summaries

Conclusion

An a-priori dismissal of book summaries is premature as it ignores the benefits they bring to the table. Specifically, while the analytical reading of Great books facilitates depth of knowledge, the reading of summaries of Good books facilitates breadth of knowledge. In order to reap the benefits of book summaries, however, you must first make the correct decision whether the book lends itself to a summary and if so, you must read that summary actively.

Hence, within a broader view of books and reading, book summaries find their place. This renders reading purists’ militant rejection of book summaries as a source of knowledge equivalent to throwing away the baby with the bathwater.