Show HN: Made a web app to read a book carefully, paragraph by paragraph
readwok.com
readwok.com
For every paragraph you read, take note of any idea, comparison or memory you had while reading it.
If nothing came, actively ask yourself: what is the author saying here? Explain this paragraph, in written form, to yourself as if you're explaining it to someone else.
In my experience, in the end of the first page I'm already fully concentrated and my brain feels warmed-up.
The written notes are important. I feel like writing forces the brain to enter a "rational, active mode", instead of the "low energy, low attention, low reasoning" day to day mode.
This, obviously, is not a data-driven, scientifically informed method. Is just my personal experience.
I regularly work with students using "active learning" methods and having people express what they just learned/experienced/used is a powerful way to build up understanding! So not surprised to see this technique applied to self-reading.
Reading physical books also may to be correlated to higher, active comprehension: "human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination" (article with related discussion https://readup.com/comments/the-guardian/skim-reading-is-the...)
This is a warm-up routine when I can't focus on my reading. After one or two pages, I feel focused and engaged.
One or two times I had to stick with it for longer. Or even in the middle of a reading session, in a very obtuse book.
This, obviously is for technical (or non fiction) books.
It's just yet another way to read a book, that can be useful in some cases and can make the reading more interesting and clear.
The idea was initially simple - split it to read it. Reading paragraph by paragraph might help you to read more slowly, carefully, and deeper.
Also, I've added a lot of themes, fonts, and effects to let anyone set up their own style of reading.
Just to clarify, when you click on the next paragraph button - next paragraph will appear on the screen without scrolling and changing your current paragraph?
Maybe multi paragraphs mode that you can find in the settings can help you to read in a such way?
I'd want i to stay in place and i+1 appear under it (and become active). This way there is less movement on the screen and I don't have to scan the screen up identifying where the new active paragraph starts, just keep reading the new paragraph where the old one ended.
I imagine it like the difference between scrolling a text with mouse when reading it, or with page-down button. I prefer the latter, this way your eyes move through screen as they would do with paper instead of picture moving and your eyes staying on the same place, and you can also utilize location memory (“I remember that author said X at the bottom right of the page while the top of the page was saying Y”). The other thing is, it provides another way to split the text into “pages” and give you a natural feeling of how much you've read (location memory again, “author is introducing X, I remember that they've set up the scene for it two pages back”).
The current mouse-wheel-scrolling-like approach seems to be more like audiobook that gives you book contents in a continuous stream, while the page-down approach is more like paper split into pages. I think both must have some benefits and looks like your tool (with some change) can accommodate both types of readers.
Scrolling is a more natural way of reading.
What really helps me with reading long articles online is a little "% read" counter in readup.com. This app tries to track exactly what you're reading. The feeling of getting credit for actually reading something adds motivation to read it, and helps me get through small moments of distraction (disclaimer: I'm working for Readup. Here's how that tracking works! https://blog.readup.com/2020/11/02/how-readup-knows-whether-...)
I thought of having a browser plugin + a javascript library would greatly help reader and website developer adoption. Since now you have a product, you might find it useful. (I might still build it)
This app makes that technique very easy to accomplish, plus helps the reader concentrate, plus allows in-tool editing. I'll be sending the link to this to several of my novelist friends, and I suspect they'll love it.
You already seem to be doing that that for single-para mode and it does feel more consistent.
My only suggestion would be to allow you to use something like space bar instead of the down arrow or scroll wheel. (Or if there are other buttons I could press, to make that clear somehow.)
Great concept!
Of course sometimes PDFs are just image files attached together and in that case it's impossible to do paragraph reading or any good stuff, but even in that case being able to synchronize position across devices would be a plus.