＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
<Added on 2022/8/21> “Literature YouTuber Bell” who posts “book review videos”
Even if you’re not good at reading, I think the “book review videos” by “Literature YouTuber Bell” are easy to get into because you can just listen to them while looking at the screen (or just listen without looking at the screen, which is fine).
Now attracting attention in the publishing world, the YouTube channel of “Literature YouTuber Bell” has grown into a popular channel with 171,000 subscribers as of 2022.
However, when she first launched the channel, she only streamed secretly out of curiosity, without even telling her family or friends.
She launched her YouTube channel in 2015. She plans, films, and edits all of the videos she uploads two or three times a week, but she puts the most effort into her “book review” videos. When she comes across a phrase that catches her eye while reading a book, she puts a sticky note on it and reads it carefully, thinking about how to introduce it. She then writes a script that is five to ten minutes long, films it in about an hour, and spends six or seven hours editing it.
<Added 1/1/2021> Flyer starts offering a “contactless browsing app”
As the spread of COVID-19 continues, “contactless services” are becoming more widespread in various places. Flyer, which offers a “summary site,” has also started offering a service in some bookstores since October 2020 that allows users to “browse” books at bookstores by scanning the “QR code of the book’s summary” with their smartphone without having to pick up the book themselves.
The app is available in about 300 bookstores nationwide, and covers about 30 books, including business books.
The “contactless browsing corner” is a promotion for business books, run in partnership between Flyer, which distributes summaries of business books via an app, and Nippan, a major publishing distributor.
By offering a way to browse books without touching them in the COVID-19 era, the company hopes to create a new channel for book purchasing.
The phrase “Ihen Sanzetsu（「韋編三絶（いへんさんぜつ）」）” appears in the “Records of the Grand Historian（「史記」）.” It is an analogy for reading a book over and over again. In his later years, Confucius loved the “Book of Changes（「易経（えききょう）」）,” one of the “Four Books and Five Classics,” and read it over and over again, so much so that the leather strings binding the book broke many times. This phrase comes from the story.
However, even though we today have 24 hours in a day, just like in Confucius’ time, the reality is that we are busy with many things.
A huge number of books, including e-books, are published in the modern world, and you could say we are in a state of “publication overload” or “information overload.”
Within a limited time, we need to select the books and useful information we need from among all these publications and information. In that case, the “book introduction” at the end of a paperback book, the “book review” column in a newspaper, and the “POP” handwritten book introduction tag attached to books displayed in a bookstore by the bookstore staff can be helpful.
However, in this age of the Internet, “summary sites” and “book review sites” are still well suited, and are very convenient as they allow easy access to a lot of information. This can be called “time-saving reading.”
In this article, I would like to introduce some “book summary sites” and “book review sites.”
1. Book Summary Sites
(1) flier＜flier（フライヤー）＞
This site is designed for busy businessmen who don’t have much time, and is one of the largest book summary sites in Japan, with 3,313 books and over 190,000 registered users.
Management consultants and experts in various fields carefully read each book and create summaries, and there is also a system of multiple internal and external checks on the summaries, so the quality is high.
There are three pricing plans: a free plan, a silver plan, and a gold plan.
(2) SERENDIP＜SERENDIP（セレンディップ）＞
This is also a summary site designed for busy businessmen, with a collection of over 1,400 books and over 80,000 registered users.
It covers everything from business and economics to technology, politics, and culture, and also provides Japanese digests of popular books overseas. It is mainly used by large corporations and other businesses, but can also be used by individuals. The fee is 30,000 yen for a one-year contract.
(3) Bookpe＜ブクペ＞
This is a service where anyone can write and publish a book summary. The system is set up so that writers are rewarded for pages that are viewed frequently.
Since anyone can post summaries, the quality of the summaries cannot be guaranteed. Rather than being used to get summaries, it seems to be used as a reference when researching books that interest you.
(4) Bizpow＜Bizpow（ビズポ）＞
This is a summary site that specializes in business books.
(5) BOOK-SMART＜BOOK-SMART（ブックスマート）＞
This is a summary site that claims to curate and provide summaries of books that business people should read right now.
2. Book review sites
(1) Book Vinegar＜ブックビネガー＞
What sets it apart from other sites is that it displays the “estimated reading time” and “importance” of each chapter. In addition, the “Books that influenced this book” column introduces the citations and references used, which is useful for cross-sectional reading.
(2) Booklog＜ブクログ＞
This service is centered around a book review site. It has a large collection of novels, but the good thing about Booklog is that you can hear the opinions and impressions of various people about the book.
(3) I love books＜本が好き＞
This is a book review site where book lovers gather. Its unique feature is that it has a community function.
(4) Shinkan JP＜新刊ＪＰ＞
The site’s distinctive feature is that it features reviews of obscure books that are not available in regular bookstores.
(5) BOOK asahi.com＜BOOK asahi.com＞
This is a book review site run by the Asahi Shimbun.
(6) HONZ＜HONZ＞
This is a book review site that covers “all fields except novels, self-help books, and IT books” (science, history, society, economics, medicine, education, art, and business). Its biggest feature is that it only covers “new books published within the last three months.”
3. Reader’s Digest＜リーダーズ・ダイジェスト＞
There used to be a famous magazine called “Reader’s Digest” that collected summaries of books.My father-in-law was a busy businessman who works for a major general contractor. When he was young, he was a studious and hardworking man who, after finishing work at the company and coming home, would study on his own until late at night to obtain the qualification of “First Class Architect”.
My father-in-law was an avid reader of Reader’s Digest and had many back issues at home.
Currently there is no Japanese version of the magazine, but it is an English version. However, I think it is perfect for reading while also studying English, just like an English newspaper.