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The catalog

605 book summaries, written from scratch.

The books people mean to read and never quite get to, each one condensed to about six thousand words and read in Fovea one word at a time. Every title exists in English and in French. Nothing below is the book’s own text.

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A few you will recognise

How long it takes

A Fovea summary runs about 6,000 words. Read with the pacing the app actually uses, the median one in the catalog takes:

24.0min
300 words a minute, the speed the app starts you on
18.1min
400 words a minute, a comfortable working pace
16.1min
450 words a minute, about where a typical summary here gives out
10.5min
700 words a minute, past the point where comprehension holds

These are medians across the catalog, not this title’s exact figure, and they are measured rather than calculated: the gap between words is not constant, so words divided by speed gives a number the reader never produces. The last row is there for honesty, not as a recommendation. Comprehension gives out somewhere around 350 to 500 words a minute, and where exactly is a property of the text, not of the app.

Be clear about this

These are summaries. They are not the books.

Fovea wrote every summary in Fovea independently and from scratch, in our own words. We do not reproduce, abridge or excerpt an author's text. A summary carries the ideas and the argument, not the sentences that expressed them, and it runs at roughly a sixth of the length of the book behind it.

It is not written by, affiliated with, or endorsed by the author or the publisher. The title and the author are named here for identification only, and the cover art is generated for Fovea rather than taken from the book’s real jacket.

If you want the actual book, buy it, then import it into Fovea and read it here for nothing. That will never be behind a subscription.

The whole catalog

All 605 titles, by subject. Every one has its own page.

Science

153 summaries

Business

145 summaries

Psychology

145 summaries

Philosophy

122 summaries

Biography

1 summary

Education

1 summary