This is as pathetic a commercial offering as I can imagine. Hopefully you guys are getting a fee just for this placement, because surely you wonât be getting much in sales commissions. I hope not, anyway.
Goodness, who could have posted such a thing? Why would anybody try to make money off BoingBoing?
#ISNâT THIS BLOG COMPILED AS A LABOUR OF LOVE FOR US, THE ASSHOLES WHO REFUSE TO PAY FOR THINGS WE LOVE?
Does anyone have any reviews of the service? Is it even worth it or just glorified product descriptions?
Maybe Iâve misunderstood the idea, but it sounds like a subscription service to Cliffs Notes-ish summaries.
Finding time to read isnât easy. Enter the âCliffâ: a convenient summary of a nonfiction bookâs key ideaâŚ
Although if youâre the type of person who starts conversations with âI just finished a Jonah Lehrer bookâŚâ, maybe this service would be useful.
Except Cliff Notes actually feature critical analysis of the text. This is more like Soap Opera Digest, or Douglas Adamsâ description of humans inventing VCRs to watch TV so they donât have to.
Friends of my parents moved to Colorado in the mid-80s and opened a video store. I visited them around 1990, and they told some weird stories about customers. The one that always stuck with me is the guy who rented 4-6 tapes a night, and returned them all the next day, renting another 4-6. Just about 7 days a week. They finally asked how he watched them. He said he viewed them on Fast-Forward.
Never found out why.
A big part of reading is thinking. I donât believe the quality of understanding that comes from reading an outline of the book could be even remotely close to the experience of reading and processing the information as the author intended. But then again if youâre the type of person that is concerned with being âthe life of the intellectual party at your next gathering!â, I donât think understanding is high on your priority list anyways. What an obnoxious world we are creating.
Wow this company has SEOâd themselves like no other I have ever seen. Try finding anything on this and all you find is the same totally non critical reviews over and over and over again.
Sounds like a sort of thing for professional schmoozers so that they can riff all over cocktail-party conversations.
I canât imagine anyone else enjoying books and going with this service, though.
You wonder who does the distilling and how much their education or cultural standing impacts on what is presented.
Seems to be only non-fiction.
Seems to be only non-fiction.
Too bad⌠Iâd love to have seen which take on the Bible theyâd have used.
Also see âBlack Mirror / White ChristmasââŚ
@Miramon isnât questioning the presence of ads on BoingBoing. His point is that this one is laughably off target. Boingers already read a lot so we donât need a trick to get us there. For much the same reason weâd also object to ads for penis-enlargement pillsâŚ
I donât care if itâs the worldâs current âsmartest personâ summarizing the key points, I think each person gets different things out of a book, and I donât believe thereâs anyone except me who will get the same thing, exactly.
Or for people who are old enough to remember them (Iâm barely just old enough in my 40s), Readerâs Digest Condensed Books. My grandparents were subscribers in my childhood. Every month or so, they got a book (roughly the size of a normal book) that had condensed versions of 3 books or so reduced down to about 100 pages each. Mostly novels, but the occasional non-fiction work as well.
This doesnât appear to be people âgetting anythingâ out of the books other than a summary of key points. This is pure pop culture regurgitation.
OTOH what the fuck else are you going to get out of the Thomas L. Friedman level nonfiction? This service is perfect to pander to the sorts of people who find it insightful.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
