💡 WiseUp! Vol. 71 — Read better with mind maps and discover the new Quick Lookup

📍 Let's start with a reading recommendation

How to think on paper (become a genius-level thinker)

Craig Perry draws mind maps of book concepts to avoid a common trap: collecting knowledge without doing the hard work of learning. Here he walks through how he uses them to make more connections as he reads. “The greatest future-proof skill a learner, writer, or creator can develop, is learning how to learn.”

From the support inbox

Have questions about using Readwise or Reader in your workflow? We'd love to be your guide! Reply to this email with your question and you might be featured in an upcoming issue. Even if your question isn’t featured, we’ll respond to every message.

❓ A Readwise question from Paul R:

Can I use my Readwise library to surface connections, insights, and takeaways I might otherwise miss?

Your Readwise library contains more context than most people realize. Use ready-made workflows to catch up on feeds, review books alongside related notes, quiz yourself on recent reading, or explore trends and themes across everything you've saved. They work with both the Readwise MCP and CLI.

❓ A Reader question from Gergo B:

Is there a way to automatically tag certain documents in Reader based on where they came from or what they're about?

Ghostreader auto-tagging is a great way to keep your library tidy as new documents arrive. You can create custom rules that automatically apply tags based on metadata like a document’s source, author, title, or type. For example, articles from The New York Times could be tagged news , while YouTube videos about ChatGPT could be tagged ai , helping organize your reading without any extra work.

📖 New help doc of the week

Curiosity, meet context

You know the feeling: one unfamiliar term turns into twelve browser tabs and suddenly you’re researching Byzantine trade routes. Quick Lookup gives you fast context directly in Reader so you can learn what you need and keep reading. Check out Cayla’s new guide to learn how to use the feature, save its responses to Readwise, and improve your whole reading flow.

🎬 New video of the week

Father-ready reads

With Father’s Day around the corner here in the States, we wanted to shared Ryan Holiday’s 15 Books That Will Make You A Better Parent. Number one is a team favorite, even for those who don’t have kids 🙂

📰 May 30 - June 5 updates

What's new in Reader and Readwise

🔍 Improved Quick Lookup — Tristan taught Quick Lookup to read the surrounding sentence when you select a word or phrase, so it more reliably picks the right response: defining a word, looking something up, or translating it. Artem also rebuilt the lookup panel to make it faster, fixed a case on Android where selecting a word wouldn't open it, and stopped the page behind the panel from reacting to taps so you won't accidentally flip the page while a lookup is open.

🤖 Improved MCP & API Video Metadata — The Readwise MCP and the list API now report the length of videos and podcasts (their listening_time_seconds). Thanks to Krzys, your tools can now see how long a video or podcast actually runs.

💳 Fixed Subscription Activation — Tristan fixed a bug where some Reader subscriptions purchased through Apple weren't activating and the account could still show as expired even though the purchase went through. Apple purchases now activate reliably, and affected accounts have been restored.

🛜 Parsing Updates — Krzys improved how Reader handles documents from bain.com, theinitium.com, psychotherapynetworker.org, and emcrit.org.

👍 Three featured finds from the team

From research lead Kait

Something to read 📖
Kait is about 100 pages into Biography of X by Catherine Lacey and already fully hooked. It's written as a biography of a mysterious, shape-shifting artist after her death, as her widow tries to reconstruct who she really was. She's still early but it's already a juicy read, and she's having a lot of fun untangling the clues behind X's life, work, and artistic mission.

Something to focus ⏰
On days when she's feeling scattered, Kait writes down the very next thing she needs to do and sets a timer for 25 minutes. It's such a simple practice, but just naming one small goal and starting on it is usually enough to give her momentum for the rest of the day. Often, that helps her find a way to make a task she's not looking forward to feel more fun, or just leaves her feeling more creatively energized and inspired to get going.

Something to unwind 🍸
Now that summer is arriving in the Pacific Northwest, it's shrub season! Nope, not the plant, but the tangy fruit-and-vinegar syrups. Kait is a big fan, and likes to add a splash to sparkling water with lime or crushed mint for an easy, satisfying drink. Her favorite is a local brand called Girl Meets Dirt, but she thinks they're available more widely too. Very low effort, very high "fun & fancy beverage" payoff.

💬 From the Readwise group chat

A (very much) non-transparent name

Somewhere in our codebase live two variables: readerBackground and readerBackgroundOpaque. One of them is opaque. It's the first one. We apologize to nothing and no one.