Blinkist: Book Summaries Daily

I so very rarely do any kind of online reviews, especially in the app world because it’s often like you’re constantly trying out a million or two all of the time for some period of time. I will be real and say that this blew me away and I really love it so far. I am an avid reader who’s constantly in pursuit of knowledge and bettering myself, learning, becoming, evolving. That’s just my constant desire and goal. I found myself spending endless free time in between the covers of a new book almost daily - and the natural change over to ebooks has become another highly enjoyable hobby of mine. There are so many books on so many topics that I cannot wait to read, study and learn from! So when the cool idea of Blinkist showed up in my App Store search one afternoon, I was curious. I was hesitant at first. How could that like cliffs notes style of summarizing really be that interesting or helpful? But I do enjoy it a lot! Every day I can’t wait to see what the daily featured Blinkist will be. I truly do enjoy reading these key concept chapters. It hasn’t replaced reading the books I am most curious about oe excited to read - it’s become more or a preview into it to help me identify if this is something I want to explore further and read the whole book. It’s like a supplement or preview. And also a great refresher and key concept kind of neat little handbook. I love it so far. My only issue with it that I hate is the cost of it. Being a mom and living in a world where money is kind of crazy these days - I have to cut corners when I can. I am loving the free trial but I hate that I can’t justify a 100 subscription. It’s amazing and fun though. I am enjoying it a lot.

(Full disclaimer, because I know people can be (rightfully, perhaps) skeptical of very effusive reviews like these: I’m not being paid to write this, nor am I a Blinkist “partner”, etc. — these are completely my own thoughts, and I’m writing them on my own initiative and volition.) This app is absolutely amazing. I’m grateful and ecstatic that I discovered it, but annoyed I haven’t been using it longer. It condenses almost every book conceivable — philosophy, politics, relationships, you name it — into what you need to know, breaking it down by chaptered themes, with examples; obviously, I’m not recommending this as an alternative to actually reading the books, but if your objective is just to glean, in a very practical, manageable format (just the perfect length — not as cursory as an internet summary, not as lengthy and tedious as a critical essay), the essentials, you can’t do without this. It allows you to expose yourself to SO much, so easily and quickly, and it makes learning really quite fun. It’s also an excellent substitute for the infamous, mindless “doom-scrolling”, given it’s organized similarly. Almost every book is available with voice narration, too.

This app is suffering from AI in two ways. On one hand AI is going to kill its business model because it’s no longer a premium service to get book summaries in audio form. If blinkist used only human reviewers that were not using AI then I’d argue it would still be worth a premium price. But when your “blink” is filled with so many padding words and phrases, a hallmark of AI generated slop, then it defeats the very concept of having short summaries. And that’s the second way AI is killing this service. The quality of the blinks is terrible. Half of everything in the blink is empty text. Reading other reviews it seems like blinkist is in a downward spiral in how they run their business too. Ppl complaining of scammy practices regarding renewals etc. what I observed first hand is they are desperate to get new subs. You can google around and find a link to 80% off of an annual membership. I didn’t use it but the link was live and took me to a page trying to get you to buy now with a fake countdown timer deceiving you with some false scarcity. The other thing I noticed is the moment I cancelled my “free trial” the service stopped working even though I’m entitled to 6 more free days per Apple’s policy. So clearly this is a sinking ship. You’d do better looking for edification elsewhere. It’s sad because when it first started up (a decade ago?) before AI it was actually a really good service that put some effort into generating blinks that were worth reading.