📚 My favorite books of 2024 so far, book summary tips, and more.

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👋 Hey everyone,

We are 50% through 2024, here are a few of my favorite books from this year so far:

• “Million Dollar Weekend” by Noah Kagan

  • A fantastic book for anyone trying to start their first business. The author built 7 $1M+ companies.

• “Glucose Revolution” by Jesse Inchauspé

  • An excellent book for anyone interested in living longer and healthier. Will help you stop having sugar crashes.

• “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom

  • An emotional memoir that will help you realize what’s important in life. Might make you cry at the end.

• “Never Enough” by Andrew Wilkinson

  • A great business memoir that takes you on Andrew’s journey from making $6 an hour as a barista to being a billionaire by the time he was 36.

• “Crypto Confidential” by Nat Eliason

  • A wild story about how Nat made and lost millions of dollars in the world of crypto. It’s a great read for anyone interested in crypto or investing.

• “Disappointing Affirmations” by Dave Tarnowski

  • This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. Instead of cliché affirmations about happiness, it's filled with witty, sarcastic affirmations.

📚 Book Summary:

I get a TON of questions about book summary apps so I’m turning this week’s newsletter into a book summary apps masterclass.

Here are the 3 most common questions people ask:

📖

1) Can Book Summaries Replace Reading Books?

That’s what I originally thought.

Why spend 5 hours reading a book when I can spend 5 minutes reading a book summary instead?

Back when I was in college, I downloaded a book summary app because I wanted to read more books.

But because I was a broke college student, I didn’t want to pay for the app. Fortunately, the app let you read 1 free summary a day.

So every morning, I would open up the app and read the one free book summary on my commute to school.

I did this every single day for 100+ days.

But then I asked myself:

• What do I remember from these book summaries?

• How many book summaries changed my life?

The answer to both questions: ZERO.

But that doesn’t mean book summaries are useless, in fact, there’s a great purpose for them if used correctly.

Here’s how:

Book Summaries = Movie Trailers

You can watch the movie trailer for “Inception” or “Shawshank Redemption”, but just watching the trailer won’t blow your mind or move you emotionally.

The same is true of books.

Just reading a summary of lessons from a book won’t inspire or motivate you to take action.

But both summaries and trailers are a great way to SAMPLE the content.

Just like how you watch a movie trailer to decide whether or not the movie is worth watching, you want to read a book summary to decide whether or not the book is worth reading.

The truth is that most books aren’t worth reading. So it’s helpful to use book summaries as a way of sampling the book to see if it’s interesting to you or contains the lessons you’re looking for.

If you like the summary, that’s a good sign you should get the book and read it.

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2) How Do You (Alex) Use Book Summaries?

As mentioned above, I use book summaries as a way to sample which books are a good fit for me.

Another way I use summaries is to think of them as my personal study buddy.

Most of these book summary apps hire people with PhDs or domain expertise to read books and write detailed yet easy-to-understand summaries.

So if I’m reading a deep philosophy book or sophisticated psychology book, I’ll read the book summary to better understand it and see if there are any key lessons that I’ve missed.

For example, I recently read “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse.

It’s a classic novel that was written over 100 years ago. It’s a deeply spiritual and philosophical read, so I knew there were probably a lot of things I missed or went over my head.

So I read a summary of the book which helped me better understand the book’s key events, themes, and lessons.

So if you’re having trouble understanding the book you’re reading, try reading a summary of it to help you out.

📖

3) Do You Have Any More Book Summary Tips?

Here’s one more helpful tip: Reread it when you need it.

Let’s say you read a book about negotiation years ago but lost it or didn’t take notes on it.

Now is the time to read a summary of the book to refresh your memory on the key lessons from it.

Or maybe you read a book years ago that is now the book for your company’s book club, but you didn’t have a chance to reread it.

Reading a summary of the book can help jog your memory so that you can have meaningful conversations even if you haven't had the opportunity to read the entire book.

Summaries provide a way to quickly review and recall the main lessons of a book without rereading the entire work, saving you a lot of time while still benefiting from the key insights.

TL;DR: The key is to use book summaries as a tool to supplement and reinforce deeper learning, not as a replacement for reading books.

✅ Actionable Advice:

1) Use book summaries as a way to sample books before buying them:

• Book summaries ≠ Reading the whole book

• Book summaries = Movie trailers

2) Use book summaries as study buddy to:

• Help explain complex topics to you

• Find the most important lessons for you

• Give you exercises so you can apply what you’ve learned

3) Use book summaries as a way to refresh your memory on key lessons:

• If you didn’t take notes on a book or want to revisit some of the most important lessons from the book, read a summary of the book.

PS: You can try Shortform for free for 5-days here.

💎 Weekly Gem:

Documentaries:

Here are 3 documentaries worth watching:

• Arnold: A super inspiring documentary about the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It covers everything from his childhood to his bodybuilding days, to his successes in Hollywood, and to his time as governor of California.

• Turn Every Page: A great watch for hardcore writers and readers. It follows the life of iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro and his legendary editor Robert Gottlieb.

• World War II: From the Frontlines: The best WWII documentary I’ve ever watched, it’s a must-watch for history fans. It contains enhanced archival footage from all sides of the war and brings WWII to life like never before.

Thank you for your support, read on everyone!

-Alex W.