I'm a huge reader, going through 1-2 books a week. In 2025, I decided to let social media decide what I should read, based on what was trending and talked about. I wanted to know what great new books are out there. What a goddamned waste of time. I read so much trendy and well-marketed crap, full of characters I don't like and ideologies that I don’t relate to. I don't want to waste any more of my time with bad books. I looked at what other book tracking apps are doing, and their recommendation engines are based on user reviews and book moods. Why would I trust the reviews of people I don't know? So I built an engine that would get to know me, and make recommendations personalized to my interests. You ever notice how book tracking apps count by book? But what if one book is 1000 pages and another one is 100? Each is counted as one book. And what if one book has 300 words per page and another has 100? Still counts as one page. I’m not going to understand myself well as a reader if I don’t get more accurate numbers. So, every book in the catalog has their proper word counts, scanned. Then, each book in the catalog is analyzed for difficulty on nine point scale. With that, I can calculate the total cognitive load per day, per page, based on my reading records. I also scanned each book for literary regard: how often is it assigned in university classes, and how many translations does it have? Now, I can know what kinds of books I like reading, and I can get similarly challenging and reputable books. I also write a lot of notes and save quotes when I read. I used to have a pen with me and I would underline pages and write in the margins. What a waste of time! So now I simply ask Siri, or I click on the mic button, and record my thoughts, all of which are stored in the database, and synced with Notion and Obsidian. If I want to read out a quote, it’s automatically transcribed, corrected for spelling (if the characters or places have strange names), and stored. No more wasting time and momentum underlining and typing things out. Just speak to Reading Rate, and it'll store everything for you. All of my notes and quotes are analyzed by AI, so that I can get recommended books based on the themes I’m interested in. No more guessing what book to read next. I know exactly what will interest me. I also have a bit of aphantasia: I can’t really visualize the characters in the books I’m reading, nor can I imagine their setting. So, I built an AI chat that can generate images for me, so I can have a clear image with me as I’m reading. The AI chat can also talk with me about any parts I’m confused about. I’m thinking of this like Strava for Reading. How can I improve my daily cognitive load? How can I be a more efficient and effective reader? Daily performance reports show me how I’m doing, and predict my reading rate, so I can know when I’ll finish the book I’m reading, and all the other books in my TBR list. And if you're in a book club, you can tell the app when your book club is going to meet, and then it'll keep you on track to have the book read on time, and prepare notes for you to discuss based on the ideas you found interesting. But what if you read Epubs? Upload them to the app and use our reader. Anything you highlight will be saved. Generate images from passages on the fly. Any time you read in the app tracks your Words Per Minute. Basically, I'm building every feature for reading possible, and continue to add more. This is what the future of reading looks like. If you're serious about reading, I hope you'll find this useful.

ReadingRate

You have ~1,000 books left. Stop wasting them.

You have ~1,000 books left. Stop wasting them.