Robert Cottrell: The Secrets of Reading
North Star Podcast
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What's the Point of a Summary?
If a book can be summarized, it shouldn't be a book, exactly. But if we followed that precept, then the shells of our libraries and shops would be astonishingly depopulator. I like to write long pieces but i want to make it unsummarizable - where the sum is greater than the parts within it. A lot of it is this business of trying to turn your book into a reference library for the given subject. There's an 80 20 here. If you can capture 95% of the value of the story in five % of the words 's going to shed any tears for the five percent that he missed. And sticking around to see it all wrapped up in
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