The blog
On reading well.
AI Book Summaries vs. Actually Reading
What an AI book summary actually gives you, what it silently drops, and when each is the right tool — an honest accounting from people who build reading software.
Chat With a Book: What It Means and How It Works
Chatting with a book means AI answers built from the book's real text, not a model's memory of it. What it's good for, how it works, and the spoiler test to run first.
Choosing an AI Reading Assistant: An Honest Guide
The three kinds of AI reading tools — chatbots, summary apps, and in-reader companions — what each is actually for, and five tests that separate good from bad.
Does AI Make You a Lazier Reader?
It can — but not the way critics assume. Where AI genuinely weakens reading, where it strengthens it, and a one-question test for which side of the line you're on.
How AI Reading Companions Actually Work
A plain-language explanation of how AI reading companions work: text chunking, embeddings, retrieval, and the position boundary that keeps spoilers structurally impossible.
How to Use AI to Understand Difficult Books
A working method for reading books that fight back — philosophy, dense history, old prose — with an AI companion handling the friction while you do the thinking.
Spoiler-Free Recaps: Catching Up Mid-Book
Lost after time away from a book? How to get a recap of exactly as far as you've read — without spoilers — instead of rereading chapters or abandoning the book.
The Best Questions to Ask an AI About a Book
Fifteen questions that get real answers from an AI reading companion — rescue questions, pressure questions, consolidation questions — plus the ones not worth asking.
Can AI Help You Read Without Spoiling the Book?
Most AI tools have read the whole book, and one careless question ruins the ending. What a spoiler-safe reading assistant looks like, and why it has to be built into the reader itself.
How to Start Reading the Classics (Without Getting Lost)
The classics are free, and famously hard to start. Which books to open first, what to do when you're confused, and why the confusion is usually the good part.
How to Remember What You Read: A System That Actually Works
You finish a book, and a month later you can barely summarize it. The fix isn't better memory — it's a small system: mark, note, question, synthesize.