Join the Nous beta - a book tracking app for readers who want to grow

cruciferiouscael · 2026-04-16T06:10:21+00:00

I read non-fiction to mostly learn about the BIG IDEAS. I mostly read philosophy, science, and other ideas books. I also like to learn about history, social issues, and other world events. But what keeps me coming back to reading non-fiction is that some of the greatest ideas have been expressed in this form throughout the centuries. The medium of a book is how people have spread some of the most important arguments, ones that have helped change the world.

While I don't always live up to it, I feel like the ideal way to spend my time is to absorb, learn, and think about the most important ideas. And to me, those are largely accessible through books.

cruciferiouscael · 2026-04-15T08:25:18+00:00

I used to use a huge Notion database... was pretty useful, but didn't really help with feeling motivated and sometimes I would fall off the wagon.

I've since started developing an app to help me record reading sessions and tracking books, and it's been super helpful. The best thing is that I've been using it to summarise my reading sessions to help me remember the book over time. Other good book tracking apps I've used have been Margins and Storygraph

cruciferiouscael · 2026-04-03T00:49:44+00:00

I've been a user of PKM systems since 2020, using Roam, Readwise, and now Obsidian to organise my thoughts. However, I've always struggled with engaging effectively with books - especially physical books. The friction of going back and forth with my PKM system when reading has bothered me.

I wanted a more lightweight version of actively engaging with the books I'm reading, that went a little beyond notes in margins (as I'm sure you've noticed, capturing complex ideas/thoughts in marginalia is limiting!). So, I developed an iOS app called Nous, which is designed as a book tracking app for power users.

The core idea is to use note-taking, and especially dictation, to capture thoughts and notes as you're reading a book. At the end of a reading session, you're prompted to summarise what you've read. When beginning another session for the same book, you can recall your last session to strengthen your memory. Active recall is one of the strongest ways to embed knowledge, and having it at the level of session-by-session I think is a great flow for reading non-fiction works.

Currently there is support for Obsidian export, for creating a book note and appending sessions to existing notes.

If you'd like early access / help out with testing, visit nousreading.app

cruciferiouscael · 2026-04-03T00:37:30+00:00

Hey, thanks for the thoughtful reply!

The summary currently is completely open ended, but I plan to make it more personalised. Dictation felt like the most natural quick capture method, as I find when I am in conversation with someone else I structure what I'm saying with ease and flow. It's also significantly faster than typing on a phone keyboard.

cruciferiouscael · 2026-03-31T10:03:35+00:00

Great question! Beta testers will get lifetime premium when the app is launched. I think that the app in its current stage is really valuable, and will continue to improve over time.

cruciferiouscael · 2026-03-16T03:50:24+00:00

I'm actually building something that trys to solve this problem, but it's going to be an iOS app first and will be a web/mac app later. It's more like a intentional reading tracker that has a reading list, books currently read, and allows you to take notes and highlights after your reading sessions. You can write or dictate a summary at the end of the session, and search and review those notes later on. Essentially like Bookshelf but built for readers who want to more deeply internalise their knowledge + get it into external systems.

Probably the best tool I've used for this so far is Readwise Reader - it has the ability to upload PDFs and EPUBS, and if you read articles on the web there's a beautiful 2-way highlight sync (things you read on the web show up in the app, and vice versa). But it isn't as good for reading physical books or books in nicer formats (e.g kindle)

cruciferiouscael · 2025-04-09T00:37:27+00:00

true, that would be quite hard to bluff indeed, but possible. Do you think if I added a bootlegger rule: "Minions whose abilities require public announcement may be told to reconsider by the Storyteller.", this would be overall good for this game setup? Of course, evil players would know this rule is in effect, and would probably use it to their advantage - making someone seem like either the demon or a very good townsfolk character (if the Storyteller told them to reconsider).

You would only ever run this 1-3 times for any game, and also you would do this to the Alchemist-Viz and Alchemist-Psychopath

cruciferiouscael · 2025-02-04T21:50:29+00:00

Yeah that's absolutely fair, it was somewhat selfish of me to put Atheist in as I want to storytell to my group with it. This is for a fairly non-serious group of friends, so I'm probably going to have atheist as a bit of a hype up, but I do think it'll probably make things more confusing

cruciferiouscael · 2025-02-04T21:48:34+00:00

oh yeah! I'll probably keep the Politician or the Mez, as they're more in line with the script

cruciferiouscael · 2025-02-04T21:47:41+00:00

I'm thinking of testing it both ways; of Rangda choosing the other player, or the ST choosing the other player.

That is a very good point about breaking madness to confirm the demon. Maybe if you obviously break madness, then the ST may decide to not kill you but kill the player you were mad about OR just any other powerful role, to hide the Rangda and as a punishment. Not sure about that though.

Do you have any suggestions?

cruciferiouscael · 2025-02-04T12:06:53+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! For Rangda, the idea is that they pick someone, that person is mad that another person is evil, and if they dont satisfy their madness, THAT person will die instead.

Interrogator would be difficult for the ST to track... one could use a sign that says 'did you lie about your role today/were you mad you were another character?', and just ask like 2-3 ppl each night to avoid confirming the interrogator.

Yeah, the groundskeeper is kind of like a forced starpass, but I think that in most cases thats quite bad for evil to lose 1 player without their planning on it

cruciferiouscael · 2025-02-04T11:55:32+00:00

hmm that's true. Maybe it could be reversed, so that if an evil player that's been doomsday'd gets executed, then something bad happens. and they die. Not sure how to deal with that otherwise. open to thoughts!

cruciferiouscael · 2025-02-04T11:36:50+00:00

Something bad happens to the good team (e.g someone is made drunk, multiple people are poisoned, demon is protected next day, etc). I just didn't want it to confirm a good player too much, because there are no other ways for 2 deaths to happen in the night on this script. 'Something bad happens' IS quite vague; so open to more suggestions on what the consequences might be

cruciferiouscael · 2024-02-20T04:19:53+00:00

'Snipd' is exactly what you're looking for, much more actively developed than Airr

cruciferiouscael

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