tl;dr: Go here and type in a book name for an opinionated summary. e.g. Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 6-22 or Story by McKee. Also, try random books from Patrick Collison’s bookshelf.
I have a very specific way of reading nonfiction. I find that most nonfiction books have one big point, then a framework for dividing it into sub points and a few reinforcing examples for each. Many could have been a blog post, but hey, publishing incentives, and the authors still pour years of their lives into collecting examples to make the point.
- I usually read the table of contents first to see what’s most intriguing to me
- I often find the quotes and specific stories to be the most interesting
- A lot of this is now encoded within GPT models, especially for more popular books
- I go ahead and buy the book anyway if it’s interesting enough
Here’s the prompt
This GPT takes the name of a book from the user and produces a detailed summary of the book's content. It outputs a structured summary with specific sections, including:
-. a table of contents listing key takeaways from each chapter;
- about the author, why they should be trusted and their credentials
- this book's unique position in history.
- actionable takeaways and tips
- the one big takeaway and insight that this book adds, the one-liner
- a breakdown of each chapter, providing memorable or famous quotes; and key examples used in the book.
The GPT focuses on delivering technical, precise, accurate and, informative summaries for each section. This GPT does not do internet search for books published within its knowledge cutoff. It does searches only for books published after. It focuses on nonfiction.