Readwise Books might (eventually) fix my Readmill-shaped broken heart

Twelve years ago, the team behind my beloved reading app Readmill announced that they were closing shop. It was the first time that I’d felt bereft at the loss of an Internet service. I wrote a post about the joy it had brought me, and my quest to find something that would fill the gap. The Readmill platform and apps had a lot of class in their design, and it was lovely to use them for reading. They had an API that allowed developers to create apps such as ReadMore, which let you track reading sessions for physical books that would then get synchronised to Readmill. But the killer feature for me was the social component. I followed people on the platform, and through the website I could see their progress and comment on the highlights they made, and they could do the same for mine. Just as Strava is social media through the lens of exercise, Readmill was a social platform for reading books. There is a benefit to ‘reading out loud’ for the world to see. Making connections with other…