Book summaries are useful. Fifteen minutes tells you whether a book is worth six hours, and plenty of non-fiction really is one idea padded out to 300 pages. If Blinkist is working for you, stick with it.
If it isn’t, it’s usually for one of these reasons.
“I can’t remember any of it a week later”
This is the most common one, and the summaries aren’t really the problem. Reading something well written feels like learning, but most of it doesn’t stay. What makes things stick is having to remember them without looking.
What helps: something that tests you. Flashcard apps like Anki have the best evidence behind them, but you have to bring your own material. Any app that quizzes you after you read does a lighter version of the same thing.
What won’t help: another summary app. You’ll forget those too. Our microlearning guide goes into the research.
“It doesn’t have what I want”
Summary apps mostly cover popular non-fiction, especially business, psychology and self-help, because that’s what sells. If you want to know how a clock escapement works or why the Bronze Age collapsed, there’s no bestseller to summarise.
What helps: something that isn’t tied to a catalogue. Wikipedia is free and very good. There are also apps that write a course around your question, which is what we make.
Those courses are written by AI. They’re a quick way into a subject, but check anything important somewhere else. Here’s how we write them.
“It’s too expensive for how much I use it”
Fair enough for any subscription you open twice a month. Look at how many summaries you finished last month, not how many you saved.
What helps: an app with a proper free plan, as opposed to a free trial. A free plan lets you finish something and then decide. A trial wants your card details and then ends. Our guide to free learning apps has a quick way to tell them apart.
And don’t forget your library. Most library cards come with free ebooks and audiobooks.
Where Doomlearning fits
We’re an answer to the second complaint, and partly the third. You type a question and get a course of short cards on it, so there’s no catalogue to run out of. The first chapter of every course is free, and after that free accounts get a few new cards a day.
We’re not the best answer to the first one. There’s a quiz at the end of every chapter, which helps, but if your problem is remembering things you’ve already read, a flashcard app will do more for you.
Before you sign up to anything
Write down the last three things you wanted to understand, the ones you looked up and then drifted away from. Then check whether each app you’re considering covers them. That’ll tell you more than any comparison, this one included.
We’ve left out prices because they change too often. Check the app stores for current ones.