There might be no dearth of apps that lets you go through eBooks or audiobooks. However, here is one – the Blinkist app for Android and iOS . The way the app functions is it provides users with a short summary of an eBook. Listening to the summary will let the users have an idea of what the eBook is all about without having to go through the entire eBook.
Each of the short snippets, which typically amounts to one for each chapter of an eBook, is about several minutes long. Listening to the snippets in a series can be akin to having made through the entire eBook, which means users will be able to make their way through an entire eBook within just minutes instead of having to spend long hours for the same.
All of this makes the Blinkist feel like the user is listening to an audiobook though it is going to take far less time. While it can take hours to listen to an audiobook, the Blinkist can make one feel like going through an entire eBook within just 15 mins. It is this that also happens to be one of the biggest positives of the app.
The developers behind Blinkist claim the blinks that the app creates for every eBook can be considered to be similar to the movie trailers that can let us have an idea of what the movie is going to be like. When experienced that way, the Blinkist too can be extremely handy as it will let the users have a feel of what type the eBook is going to be like.
However, to use Blinkist to actually ‘read’ an eBook can be considered a self-defeating exercise as users will only be making it through the surface without delving into the details. They won’t get to have the real magic that reading a book offers. That connection with the author via his or her writing would be seriously missing with Blinkist, which makes the app a compromise at best.
That said, the app can still make sense for those who might have always wanted to read but could never pursue with the same owing to a lack of time. Or those who lack the patience of waiting for hours to reach the end of an eBook too can benefit from the app. Of course, such users will still be missing the real magic that lies in actually reading a book. Instead, they will only be getting the gist of the entire book and nothing more.
In fact, such people can end up reading several books in the time that avid readers might take to go through each and every page of an eBook. However, it can be a topic of debate if just going through the snippets can be enough to get the essence of the literary piece. Also, with the app offering the summary, that again might deviate by a wide margin the impression the user might have had of the eBook had they read it themselves.
That said, the app also comes with its own eBook store and is something that the users can resort to just in case they’d like to go for a more traditional reading experience even though the choice of eBooks is quite limited. Nonetheless, the app comes free there for those looking for the Blinkist Premium will have to shell out a yearly subscription of $60. Among the many benefits that the Premium version offers is free access to more than 4,700 eBook titles just in case the user opts for a more thorough reading instead of listening to the Blinks.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.