The author tried to advocate a "practical view" of fiction books. When your sole aim is to extract some useful idea, why not read the abbreviated version or community reviews on Goodreads?
Because fiction is (in part) an exploration of ideas through their expression in narratives, characters, lives, history, emotions, settings, language, and so on. It's not possible to reduce the richness of that exploration to a summary, because you lose everything that made the book worth writing and reading in the first place. The author of the article fundamentally misconstrues what fiction is.
> The author of the article fundamentally misconstrues what fiction is.
Which, I believe, is the point the parent comment was making. They don’t seem to be advocating a read of the abbreviated version in general, just to the author of the post seeing as they seem to put fiction’s value on the idea.