Why summarizing books?
After subscribing to audible, I started listening to books back to back. After reading several books, I noticed I generally remember what was a book was about; however, I was struggling with remembering fascinating remarks from them. My solution was to take notes while listening to the books so that I can go back to them later and refresh my mind. Two recent motivators helped me to make my mind and use my notes and review books on my website.
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The book Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin: The book goes on describing how to be a so-called linchpin in your work/life. Being Linchpin is translated to being indispensable. In the book, one of the characteristics of a linchpin is to give a genuine gift, without expecting anything. In other words, open-source work. The author’s definition of a linchpin is that he/she doesn’t need a resume. His/Her work will be the resume he/she needs. Summarizing books is not quite a significant resume material for a computer scientist but it fits in the category of giving gifts without expecting anything. While I hope these summaries will be of use to someone; At the same time, I am well aware of the very real possibility of having no more than a few visitors. My main reason to do this is a selfish one though. Summarizing books will have the benefit of learning much more from them so I will not have any regrets even if nobody else reads them.
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The podcast BPlus: BPlus is a Persian podcast. In each episode, they will talk about a book and summarize the essence of it. It is very educational and informative. When I first started listening to BPlus, it motivated me to buy the original books and listen to them (Linchpin was one of them actually). Then I started taking notes and finally decided to write a review for them here. First, when I was considering doing this, I was not sure if this will do any good and I am still not. However, my experience with the podcast and the motivation from it to buy the original books was a clear green light. The reviews can be beneficial to someone looking for a book to read and wants to choose based on something more than the book’s cover. Besides, I do not expect many visitors and I mainly want to have a collection of reviews and notes so that I can go back to a book I read previously without reading it again. One might ask if you don’t expect visitors why did you write this introduction explaining yourself to them and my answer would be to make official and force/push myself to start writing.