Here at Reading For the Glory, we’re usually reviewing books, but every now and then we want to step back from reviews to help you in the actual task of reading for God’s glory. If you never read digitally and are a print-book purist, this post is not for you. If, however, like me, you have discovered the many benefits of digital reading, allow me to introduce you to a tool that can significantly help you retain and rediscover what you have read. It’s called Readwise.
Readwise is a subscription service (available on the web as well as an iOS or Android app) that collects all of your highlights from e-books into a searchable database. It can connect to and automatically download highlights from Kindle, Apple Books, and many other services. It also automatically files highlights by book title and author. This allows pastors, like me, to search back through all my highlights any time I’m looking for a good quote on certain topic. Or, if you have a quote that you vaguely recall, but don’t remember exactly where it was or what it said, Readwise makes it easy to find.
One of the very best things about Readwise is the daily review email. Each morning I receive an email with three of my past highlights. This regularly keeps things I have read in front of me so that I do not simply read a book once and never look at it again. You can configure your email to include as much at 15 or as little as 1 highlight per day. I often open my email to find a helpful quote that will make it into a sermon or class during the upcoming week or two.
Another plus is the way Readwise allows you to share highlights. Choose a highlight you want to share and the app will spit it out for you in a sweet looking graphic like the one below. You might have even seen these floating around social media, not realizing they were produced using Readwise.
A final benefit I will mention is a companion app called Readwise Reader. This is the best read-it-later app I’ve ever used (compare to apps like Pocket and Instapaper). When you find an online article that you want to read, but don’t have time at the moment, you just save it to Readwise Reader via the share sheet on iOS, or their web browser extension. Then later, when you have some down time, you simply open the app knock out some productive reading.
Pricing for Readwise is $53.88/year for the LITE plan (which I’m on), and $95.88/year for the full plan, which includes access to the Reader companion app. I was initially hesitant about spending money on something like this, but after having the LITE plan for almost two years, I’m absolutely sold. The benefits are easily worth the cost.
Top Photo courtesy unsplash.com
Editor’s Note: The recommendations found in this article are the sole view of the contributor. RFTG is not in partnership with Readwise and does not receive financial benefit from Readwise.
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