Book Summaries · Brett Fisher

← All postsIf reading a good book is the mind's equivalent of eating a good meal, then consuming quick summaries is like eating junk food. If I want to rapidly consume large amounts of information without any of the work of reading a book for hours, all I need to do is open TikTok, YouTube, Twitter (does anyone actually call it X?), or any other site with a feed. Their algorithms surface the most stimulating content to the top of your feed, and if you don't like the post you're looking at or the short you're watching, the next one is only a scroll away.

The short form video algorithms make you feel like you're learning a lot without actually having to put in any effort. My guilty pleasure is YouTube shorts, and I've seen thousands of videos covering a broad range of topics like history, finance, politics, science, mathematics, you name it. When short form videos were becoming popular, I remember thinking how efficient it was to get a useful nugget of information about a topic in just a few seconds. Short form video creators know that they need to capture their audience members' attention immediately or risk being scrolled past, so they don't waste any time getting to the point. But for all the videos I've watched that distill information as "efficiently" as possible, I can't think of a single TikTok video that gave my mind something to really chew on or shaped how I think.

On the other hand, many books easily come to mind that positively affected how I think and behave today. I can remember where I sat when I read them, what the cover of the books looked like, even how the books smelled and felt in my hands. The best books are the books I go back and read a second, third, or even fourth time. Each time I read the best books, I see the authors' points from a new perspective and have something new to occupy my mind and turn over in my thoughts for weeks, months, or years to come.

For example, I remember when I first read Dune in high school and the chair in my parents' house I would sit in to read it. It was a red loveseat in our living room right next to the window, where the sun would illuminate the pages. The book was paperback and thick in my hands, and as I got further into the book the cover would crease and I'd feel the slight pang of sadness at seeing the book gain its scars, but also the satisfaction of knowing the creased cover and crinkled pages were evidence of the long hours of satisfaction the book gave me. The first time I read Dune, I was entertained. I couldn't help but feel Paul Atreides' uncertainty and fears as he moved to a completely foreign planet only to be driven to the wilderness to live with people who didn't all believe in him before slowly gaining their trust and becoming their leader. I read the book a second and third time throughout the subsequent years. The next times I wasn't just entertained, but I also began to think about Frank Herbert's message and warnings about our human tendencies to believe in prophecies and create messiahs, as well as the tendencies of ill-intended people to exploit these flaws in our psychology to force their own agendas on the masses.

I never would have gotten any of this by watching a 10-second summary of Dune in the form of a YouTube short, any more than I could get the satisfaction of a steak dinner with buttery, steaming mashed potatoes by eating a bag of potato chips.

Now, I'm not arguing that people shouldn't watch short form videos or that they're a "bad" thing, whatever that means. I'd wager that plenty of people have been introduced to great books by hearing about them on TikTok, people who wouldn't have picked up said books in the first place. What I am arguing is that there is a form of lasting satisfaction and fulfillment that only comes from putting long, slow hours into something.

Recently, I've had conversations with people who use AI to summarize books for them either in written form or as a short podcast. Their argument for doing so was that they could learn the point of the books without having to spend all that time reading them. As humans, we're impatient. We want things now. But if you think that a summary of a book is as good as reading it, you might as well say that the point of eating is just to get calories, at which point you might as well eat a bag of Fritos instead of enjoying a home-cooked meal. It's like only watching movie trailers without actually watching any of the movies. Speaking of Dune, I found the two most recent movie adaptations of the book to be excellent. Those were also movies I went back and watched multiple times. But how tragic it would have been to only see 3-second clips from the movies on YouTube instead of getting the experience of watching Paul wrangle his first sandworm into his control on an IMAX screen and feel my heart pounding with the music.

I love potato chips as much as the next person (especially BBQ Lay's), but that's not the only thing I would eat....