My big reading shortcut

Over the past year I’ve been trying to read a lot more. I’ve succeeded in reading quite a few books, but I’m also “semi-reading” quite a few more. Michael Simmons has coined this as Fractal Reading, and while I don’t follow his practice exactly, it’s pretty close.

Full books

First, there are some books that I simply know I want to read cover to cover. This includes things like Seth Godin’s new book The Practice, or the highly-acclaimed book Caste from Isabel Wilkerson. I buy the book on Amazon and read through it, taking notes along the way.

Other books

Blinkist

For most everything else, I start in Blinkist. Blinkist offers book summaries that are around 15 minutes each, giving a great overview of the book. As of now they have around 4,000 books in their system, and their subscription costs around $16/mo (after a free trial).

As I read through the book on Blinkist, I highlight any areas of interest. When I finish, I skim back through it again and copy my highlights and the “blink headings” into Roam Research.

This gives me a great overview of the book, and at this point I may decide to go read the full book. Either way, my next stop is over to Goodreads.

Goodreads

Among the other features that Goodreads has is a list of “quotes” (highlights) from other readers, sorted by the most highlighted items. This often gets some precise quotes and…