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I didn’t go anywhere. Well, I mean, I did go out to the house. But for whatever reason, I missed blogging for a couple days and will catch up in a moment.
This morning, I downloaded Headway, because PP asked the FF group text whether anyone had opinions on it and I couldn’t even figure out which Headway he might be referring to. Once I understood, I signed up for one month to better understand through experience. Here is a Medium article comparing Headway, Blinkist and AcceleratEd, which are all apparently within a genre of service / app that I had kinda of known existed? But not developed to quite this degree.
https://medium.com/illumination/accelerated-vs-blinkist-vs-headway-best-learning-app-2024-fb1d2eb1a4f3
I found it striking that the author of the medium piece said this:
“My one major beef with Blinkist (and one of the many reasons why I started looking for its alternative) is their recent UI change. Previously I could swipe left to go to the next chapter, but now they have merged all chapters into a single screen, requiring continuous scrolling to keep reading. I don’t think it would be a deal-breaker for most, but for me, it is reminiscent of the infinite scroll (designer Aza Raskin’s notorious invention) which kept me spending endless hours on YT Shorts, Quora, and similar platforms — exactly the kind of experience I was trying to escape.”
Basically, this person is trying to break an endless scroll habit elsewhere by reading / listening to (because audio is supplied, so this is potentially an audiobook experience tailored to compete within a single commute or even running errands) summaries of book. Just to be clear, for many books, the summary experience _will be_ superior to actually reading the book. I’m digging into this primarily because it appears to be a really great way to get something that reviews often do not supply: an outline level summary of the contents of the book. And indeed, that’s what this thing does! It’s pretty cool. I now sort of wish I’d read more Cliffs Notes when I was young, just so I’d have a basis for quality comparison. My general recollection is that a lot of Cliffs Notes were not particularly accurate? High quality? The density of the sentences and paragraphs in Headway is impressive — this is not material that can be skimmed or absorbed while only giving part of your attention to it.
I’ve consumed two summaries: one of Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers, and Diane Stein’s Essential Reiki. These are books that I would never actually read. (Look, you can construct scenarios in which I would read them, sure. But I would never voluntarily choose to read these books.) Thus, I cannot speak to the accuracy of the summary, altho certainly in each case they matched my expectations. I keep looking for a summary to read of a book that I have read, but then I get distracted and think, but in 7 screens and about 3 minutes, I can plow through one that I would never read, and it would answer questions I have (and they did, which is even cooler).
This morning, I downloaded Headway, because PP asked the FF group text whether anyone had opinions on it and I couldn’t even figure out which Headway he might be referring to. Once I understood, I signed up for one month to better understand through experience. Here is a Medium article comparing Headway, Blinkist and AcceleratEd, which are all apparently within a genre of service / app that I had kinda of known existed? But not developed to quite this degree.
https://medium.com/illumination/accelerated-vs-blinkist-vs-headway-best-learning-app-2024-fb1d2eb1a4f3
I found it striking that the author of the medium piece said this:
“My one major beef with Blinkist (and one of the many reasons why I started looking for its alternative) is their recent UI change. Previously I could swipe left to go to the next chapter, but now they have merged all chapters into a single screen, requiring continuous scrolling to keep reading. I don’t think it would be a deal-breaker for most, but for me, it is reminiscent of the infinite scroll (designer Aza Raskin’s notorious invention) which kept me spending endless hours on YT Shorts, Quora, and similar platforms — exactly the kind of experience I was trying to escape.”
Basically, this person is trying to break an endless scroll habit elsewhere by reading / listening to (because audio is supplied, so this is potentially an audiobook experience tailored to compete within a single commute or even running errands) summaries of book. Just to be clear, for many books, the summary experience _will be_ superior to actually reading the book. I’m digging into this primarily because it appears to be a really great way to get something that reviews often do not supply: an outline level summary of the contents of the book. And indeed, that’s what this thing does! It’s pretty cool. I now sort of wish I’d read more Cliffs Notes when I was young, just so I’d have a basis for quality comparison. My general recollection is that a lot of Cliffs Notes were not particularly accurate? High quality? The density of the sentences and paragraphs in Headway is impressive — this is not material that can be skimmed or absorbed while only giving part of your attention to it.
I’ve consumed two summaries: one of Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers, and Diane Stein’s Essential Reiki. These are books that I would never actually read. (Look, you can construct scenarios in which I would read them, sure. But I would never voluntarily choose to read these books.) Thus, I cannot speak to the accuracy of the summary, altho certainly in each case they matched my expectations. I keep looking for a summary to read of a book that I have read, but then I get distracted and think, but in 7 screens and about 3 minutes, I can plow through one that I would never read, and it would answer questions I have (and they did, which is even cooler).