booksquantized

Non-fiction, quantized

Three hundred pages. Five questions. Twenty minutes.

Every non-fiction book is really answering a handful of questions. We find the five, and write each answer as a piece you can read in four minutes. Every piece is faithful to what the author argues, and narrated with the words lit as they are spoken.

Open the libraryHow this works

5 books25 piecesRead or listen

The library

The library

5 books, 25 pieces

  1. Cover of Atomic Habits5 questionsAtomic HabitsJames ClearTiny changes, repeated, decide who you become.

    The five questionsRead or listen · 4 min each

    1. The team nobody would sell a bike to
    2. The clerk who cut a customer's credit card in half
    3. A goose, a volleyball, and what you actually want
    4. Why a hundred bad photographs beat one perfect one
    5. Bored, and doing the lift anyway
  2. Cover of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant5 questionsThe Almanack of Naval RavikantEric JorgensonWealth comes from ownership and leverage, not from selling hours.

    The five questionsRead or listen · 4-5 min each

    1. The hour you cannot sell twice
    2. Ten points of judgment, one hundred million dollars
    3. A contract to be unhappy until it arrives
    4. Willpower is badly outnumbered
    5. Three answers that refuse to agree
  3. Cover of Deep Work5 questionsDeep WorkCal NewportUndistracted concentration is rare, valuable, and can be deliberately designed.

    The five questionsRead or listen · 4-5 min each

    1. Your office is built to break the thing it pays for
    2. What a blacksmith knows about your job
    3. Four good hours, and how to protect them
    4. Your attention is being trained right now, in a queue
    5. The farmer who sold his hay baler
  4. Cover of Thinking, Fast and Slow5 questionsThinking, Fast and SlowDaniel KahnemanA fast mind supplies confident answers a slow mind rarely checks.

    The five questionsRead or listen · 4-5 min each

    1. The answer that arrives before you ask
    2. Right about everything except the cause
    3. Same money, opposite choices
    4. The self that keeps the diary did not live the day
    5. Stop trying harder and change the room
  5. Cover of Ikigai5 questionsIkigaiHéctor García and Francesc MirallesA renewable daily reason to get up, not a grand destiny.

    The five questionsRead or listen · 4 min each

    1. The man who retired for one day
    2. The world's oldest people cannot agree on anything
    3. A town that keeps its friendships in a binder
    4. The donkey that tightened its own rope
    5. One hundred and fifty cups, twelve kept

How this works

Five questions

A book is read for what it argues, and the argument fits into five questions. We find the five the author actually answers, in the order the book builds them, and add nothing from outside it.

Four minutes each

Each answer is a piece of about nine hundred words: the scene that makes the problem real, the tension, the author's answer stated plainly, and the three things worth keeping.

Read or listen

Every piece is narrated, and the word being spoken lights as you follow. Change the speed, or tap any word to jump the audio there. Reading and listening are the same page.