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You don't need to plow through a 300-page book to grasp its key concepts.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

By Jessica Kanzler, Cult of Mac Deals

Headway is a fun app that pulls insights from more than 2,000 popular nonfiction books and condenses them into brief summaries with all the key insights. It turns them into audio and text, so you can listen or read to absorb big ideas in just 15 minutes.

I reviewed the app, which is currently on sale at Cult of Mac Deals, and found it surprisingly helpful for burning through my to-read list. And a lifetime subscription to Headway Premium is currently on sale for just $49.97 (regularly $299.95) with code SAVE20.

Headway review: A mobile app brimming with book summaries

There are so many books I want to read and so little time to actually sit down and read them. Every week, I tell myself I’ll start the next one on my list, and every week, something else gets in the way. That’s why I decided to try something different: Headway. The app’s extensive library features many of the books currently on my massive to-be-read pile,

Headway gives you another way of learning from the books you don’t have time to read. It does that by pulling key ideas and insights from 2,000-plus nonfiction titles and delivering them in 15-minute reads and audio summaries. Its library covers personal development, business, health and other nonfiction categories, with new titles added monthly.

Getting started was easy. After purchase, I received an email with a redemption code, created a Headway account, entered the code, and was reading within a few minutes.

What are the book summaries like?

My only real concern going in was whether the summaries would flatten everything out, turning complex ideas into vague takeaways. That concern didn’t survive the first summary, condensed from How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships by Leil Lowndes.

When I think of book summaries, I think of a quick paragraph, maybe a bulleted list. What you get from Headway is much more robust. Each summary starts with a breakdown of what you’ll learn, which proves really useful to give you an idea of the content. These really helped me decide which summaries I wanted to read. From there, you get a condensed set of the key points from each book, written out in approachable, direct language that’s very easy to get through on a lunch break.

Headway summaries start with a brief but very helpful overview.

The audio format is where Headway fully clicked for me. Professional voice actors narrate each summary, and the production quality is close enough to a polished podcast that it genuinely doesn’t feel like a compromise.

I started working Headway into my morning routine and found I could get through two or three a day without changing my patterns. Playback speed is adjustable when you want to move faster. Plus, you can switch between audio and text at any point, or run both simultaneously.

Headway’s player works a lot like a podcasts app.

The summaries aren’t a substitute for reading the full book, and they’re not trying to be. What I liked is that now I know quite a few books I’d like to read in full (and some that I can give away unread).

What can you do with Headway?

Headway goes considerably deeper than a straight book summary app. Personalized learning plans let you select a goal and work through relevant content in a structured sequence rather than just browsing. I quite liked that Headway will email you summary recommendations, so I could often seamlessly switch from work mode to learning mode.

Headway’s fun quizzes help solidify the book summaries’ key points.

I’ve always been someone who likes school, and Headway has actually started filling that void in my life. The app goes beyond simple book summaries. It uses quizzes and trivia questions to help reinforce what you’ve read. Plus, spaced repetition tools and flashcard features are there for anyone serious about retaining what they’ve learned. There’s also a browser version if you need it, though navigation is not quite as polished as it is on the mobile app.

Does Headway actually help you learn?

I was pretty skeptical, but I’m impressed by how much I got out of using Headway in just a short time. It’s not just about the content I was learning. The fact that I was constantly reading, thinking about new topics, and making connections has left me feeling like my brain is running a little faster. The content is interesting. The investment is small, and it’s absolutely worth it to give Headway a try, particularly if you can get it on sale as I did.

Right now, Headway Premium’s lifetime subscription is on sale for $49.97 with code SAVE20 (regularly $299.95).

Buy from: Cult of Mac Deals

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