CliffsNotes for Christian Living Books
Solomon Summaries is a weekly subscription summary service that provides a ten-page summary of a non-fiction book, a review of the book, and group discussion questions. It’s for readers who want to maximize their limited time and increase their awareness of current and classic Christian non-fiction works.
This Heather and Chris (not to be confused with my lovely niece Heather and her cool husband Chris) buy more books than they have time to read. Chris is a business and ministry entrepreneur with a heart to connect Christians with culture, specifically through the Internet. He spends much of his time exploring the future of the Internet and missions with one of the largest Internet ministries in the world, bible.org. Heather, a graduate of DTS, is a writer and speaker on the intersection of Christianity, culture, and the arts.
They desire to encourage readers to read and talk more about issues facing everyday people, help them prioritize reading time, and expand their range of subjects. Here’s more from the Goodmans:
What inspired you to begin a business like this?
I (Chris) found a growing chasm between the number of books I want to absorb and the amount of time available to read them (not so much due to time shrinking, but because there are so many amazing books). In the business world, I had access to executive book summary services to glean the latest business wisdom, and I dreamed of something similar for Christian books.
I (Heather) am passionate about all things books. I love the idea of raising awareness of what’s out there.
In a culture that has adopted “I’m busy” as a standard response to the question “how are you?”, there seems to be an interesting opportunity to engage people in bite-sized chunks with the key points from a book on Christian living. Hopefully, this will help readers triage which books they want to look at further. Also, we want to help lay leaders choose good materials and resources for Sunday school classes, small groups, mentoring relationships, and leadership training, and to help pastors stay in touch with what’s out there and what their congregations are reading.
How do you choose the books?
We primarily choose books of interest to our audience–books they would like to know more about, books they’re considering buying or books they’ve heard about in a conversation and want to have an opinion about. We look at new releases, bestsellers, general Christian living books, and we have a poll on our website to find out what books our readers would like us to summarize.
What is your vision for Solomon Summaries?
As future-thinking people, we have great interest in seeing Solomon Summaries become a platform for engagement and growth. Based on the initial reaction and how passionately people share the idea with their friends (and we’re hoping they'll share it with lots of friends), we are in discussion on a number of additional pieces of the puzzle (what Chris calls the blueprint) to offer value to book readers and small group book discussions. We’d also like to get the authors of the books more involved in the discussion. We’ll be paying close attention to subscribers and their interests and ultimately it will grow into what people want and need to help them in their lives.
Solomon Summaries website (free summary available)
Heather’s Website
List of all participating bloggers